The attempt to kill Pope John Paul II sent shock waves around the world. But the trial of the attackers never really revealed where the order to kill the pontiff came from. It seems that those who were really responsible will probably never be brought to justice.
In the late afternoon of May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was standing in an open-topped vehicle greeting the thousands of the faithful who had crowded into St Peter's Square in Rome for a general audience with the head of the Catholic Church. Suddenly the pontiff collapsed and sank into the arms of his companions. The Holy Father had been shot.
The Pope was severely wounded in the attack. The bullets hit his intestines and damaged his nervous system, missing the aorta by only a few millimetres.
The Italian authorities immediately began to investigate the attack, while stunned people around the globe asked themselves who could be capable of such an act. It semmed that only a madman would try to kill a man of peace like the Pope. Various theories suggested that the attack was part of a large-scale conspiracy involving the Red Brigades - an Italian urban terrorist group - religious fanatics or even a Satanist sect. But all of these proved to be deah ends. On the basis of important pieces of circumstantial evidence, we know that the attack was planned in Bulgaria, which was at that time still a Communist-ruled satellite of the Soviet Union.
Link To KGB
Evidence gathered by the Italian police showed that the Bulgarian secret service had planned and executed the operation. Apparently, the Bulgarians thought that the attack would impress the Soviet leadership in Moscow. For support, they turned to contacts in the Turkish underworld, which was to supply suitable people to carry out the 'mission'.
The two men chosen to carry out the attach were Ali Agca and Oral Celik. They made their way to Rome and waited for the Pope. It was Agca who actually fired at the Pope; Celik was supposed to toss a hand grenade, but lost his nerve when he found himself surrounded by the dense crowd.
The police arrested Agca on the day of the attack. Despite the sensational reports in the media, he was clearly not a madman, nor was he a religious extremist. Little was known about him and Celik; Agca claimed to be a member of the Grey Wolves, a right-wing Turkish terrorist group, and claimed that the attack on the Pope had been masterminded by the KGB, the feared Soviet secret service. Intelligence agencies in the West found this story hard to believe, but rumours about the KGB's role persisted. The Pope had supported Solidarity, the trade union movement that had emerged in his native Poland in the late 1970s. The Pope's moral support took on great importance for the Polish people during the struggle against Communist rule. But for the Soviet Union, anxious to maintain its influence in Poland, the Pope's stance was a dangerous challenge.
Gradually, the police investigation ground to a halt. Three Bulgarians and five Turks, thought to be the brains of the operation, were freed in 1986 on lack of evidence .
The Victim Forgives
On December 23, 1983, John Paul II visited Ali Agca in prison, and held a 20-minute conversation with him in private during which the Holy Father forgave his attacker. Afterwards, the gunman - who is serving life sentence - said in an interview; "The Pope knows everything'. It seems in any case that the Holy Father does not want to find out the truth about the attack. He believes that his life was saved by the Virgin of Fatima.
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