At the beautiful papal residence overlooking Lake Albano outside Rome, a sound would occasionally emanate from the Pope's private chamber. It was John Paul II, flagellating himself.

''Several times he would put himself through bodily penance,'' said a Polish nun, Tobiana Sobodka, who worked in the Pope's Vatican apartments and summer residence. ''You could hear the sound of the blows when he flagellated himself.''

Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the Vatican ''postulator'' in charge of John Paul II's canonisation process, confirmed that testimony this week, saying the Polish-born Pope would whip himself as a bishop in Krakow and continued after being elected pope in 1978.

''In his wardrobe, among his vestments, there hung on a clothes hanger a special belt for trousers, which he used as a whip,'' said Monsignor Oder, describing self-flagellation as ''an instrument of Christian perfection'' to emulate the sufferings of Jesus Christ.

There are references to self-flagellation in the scriptures; many scholars interpret St Paul's words ''I chastise my body'' as the earliest reference to the custom.