PARIS -- Youthful masturbation and anti-Semitic leanings were among the startling revelations published Thursday in a posthumous memoir by France's favorite nun, Sister Emmanuelle who died this week.

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 in "Confessions of a Nun", while a celebration of brotherly love, she set out to puncture her iconic image here 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."

Emmanuelle, whom the Vatican has compared to Mother Teresa because of her many years spent working with the poorest of the poor Cairo slums, 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 of children, 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".