Juan María Fernández y Krohn

Juan María Fernández y Krohn
Born	c. 1948 Spain
Nationality	Spain
Occupation	lawyer
Known for	attack on Pope John Paul II

Juan María Fernández y Krohn (born ca. 1948, Spain) is a former Roman Catholic priest and former Belgian lawyer who tried to physically attack Pope John Paul II in 1982.

He was ordained a priest in the Society of Saint Pius X seminary in Ecône, Switzerland in 1978. He was retroactively terminated from membership in the Society after his assassination attempt on the Pope and because he openly proclaimed that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's opposition to Pope John Paul II was too weak.

On 12 May 1982, he tried to stab Pope John Paul II with a bayonet in Fátima, Portugal. It's unclear whether he wounded the Pope or not. During his trial, he said that he was opposed to the reforms of Vatican II and that he believed Pope John Paul II had been in league with the Soviet Union and even was a secret Communist agent trying to corrupt the Vatican.^{[citation needed]}

He received a six-year sentence though he served only three years and then was expelled from Portugal, after which he moved to Belgium. By then, he had abandoned the priesthood.^{[citation needed]}

In Belgium he became a controversial lawyer.^{[citation needed]} During the beginning of his career as a lawyer, he was accused of slapping judge and Cassation president Erik Carre in the face with the palm of his hand.^{[citation needed]} Fernández y Krohn was also accused of spreading anti-semitic propaganda in the councillors' room of the Brussels Palace of Justice.^{[citation needed]}

In 1996, he was charged with setting fire to a centre of the Herri Batasuna, the political branch of the terrorist Basque separatist group ETA.^{[citation needed]} He was subsequently acquitted.^{[citation needed]}

After 2000, he has lived in Belgium and Spain, and is reported to be an expert in art and literature of the Spanish post–Civil War period (1939–1990).