posted October 24, 2008 08:10 PM         

The book, written two years ago, was kept under lock and key until the 99-year-old's death on Monday, which triggered an outpouring of tributes for her work with the poor in the slums of Cairo and later in France.

But while Confessions of a Nun was a celebration of brotherly love, Sister Emmanuelle also set out in it to puncture her iconic image and conduct a "radically honest examination of her conscience", wrote her editor, Abbot Thilippe Asso.

Thus she tells of her outings to Brussels dance halls, of falling in love with her Greek teacher and of being torn between marriage and the convent. She masturbated in her youth and felt sexual temptation in later life.

Despite having a Jewish grandmother, she felt a strong antipathy towards Jews in her early life and only made her peace with other cultures when she began working among the people of the Middle East.

"Muslims, atheists and Jews nourished my Christian faith," she wrote. "They expanded my understanding of God. True value does not lie in the religion, but in the love that makes us accept others as our brothers and sisters."

Sister Emmanuelle, whom the Vatican has compared to Mother Teresa because of her many years spent working with the poorest of the poor, also shared Teresa's periods of doubt about her faith. "Faced with the absence of God in the middle of atrocious tragedies was I, in the final and lucid analysis, right to believe in Him?" she asked.

"Confronted with the death ofchildren, the very idea of an all-powerful being can seem a fantasy. My faith wobbled, steadied itself, only to wobble once more," she said, before recounting her return to "the good path".