John Paul II "knew" about cases of child abuse by Catholic priests in Poland and helped cover them up before becoming pope in 1978, a new book claims. Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek spent more than a decade combing through archives and interviewing victims and witnesses for "Maxima Culpa", which has sparked an outcry in the pope's native Poland. According to the Dutch author, this book shows a different face of the pontiff, that rather than being "empathetic, warm, sympathetic", Wojtlya was a "cold apparatchik of the institution of the church". IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES