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Attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II

Coordinates: 41°54′09.5″N 12°27′24″E / 41.902639°N 12.45667°E / 41.902639; 12.45667
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Pope John Paul II assassination attempt
The location of the shooting, marked by a stone tablet, in St. Peter's Square.
LocationSt. Peter's Square, Vatican City
DateMay 13, 1981
TargetPope John Paul II
Attack type
Shooting
WeaponsBrowning Hi-Power
Injured3
PerpetratorGrey Wolves, Mehmet Ali Ağca

The first attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II took place on Wednesday, May 13, 1981, in St. Peter's Square at Vatican City. The Pope was shot and critically wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca while he was entering the square. The Pope was struck 4 times, and suffered severe blood loss. Ağca was apprehended immediately, and later sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court. The Pope later forgave Ağca for the assassination attempt. He was pardoned by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi at the Pope's request and was deported to Turkey on June 2000.

Pope John Paul II

Attempted assassination of the Pope

The site of the shooting is marked by a small marble tablet bearing John Paul's papal coat of arms and the date in Roman numerals.

Beginning in August 1980 Ağca, under the alias of Vilperi, began criss-crossing the Mediterranean region, changing passports and identities, perhaps to hide his point of origin in Sofia, Bulgaria. He entered Rome on May 10, 1981, coming by train from Milan.

According to Ağca's later testimony, he met with three accomplices in Rome, one a fellow Turk and two Bulgarians, with operation being commanded by Zilo Vassilev, the Bulgarian military attaché in Italy. He said that he was assigned this mission by Turkish mafioso Bekir Çelenk in Bulgaria.[1]

According to Ağca, the plan was for him and the back-up gunman Oral Çelik to open fire on the pope in St. Peter's Square and escape to the Bulgarian embassy under the cover of the panic generated by a small explosion. On May 13 they sat in the square, writing postcards waiting for the Pope to arrive. When the Pope passed, Ağca fired several shots[2] with a Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol, and critically wounded him, but was grabbed by Vatican security chief Camillo Cibin,[3] a nun, and several spectators who prevented him from either firing more shots or escaping. Four bullets hit John Paul II, two of them lodging in his lower intestine, the others hitting his left hand and right arm. Two bystanders were also hit by stray assassin's bullets; Ann Odre, of Buffalo, New York, was struck in the chest while Rose Hill, of Jamaica, was slightly wounded in the arm. Çelik panicked and fled without setting off his bomb or opening fire.

The Pope was transferred from the car to the Apostolic Palace for an initial assessment because the wound did not externally appear serious. Once the Pope's pulse and blood pressure were assessed, it became clear the Pope was in danger, and an ambulance was summoned. He was taken to the hospital. The general surgeon who operated on the Pope at the hospital, where he was in charge of one of the operating theatres, Professor Dr. Francesco Crucitti, was at another hospital at the time of the attack but was told by a nun there of the attempt. He raced down the wrong way of a street in his vehicle, and was stopped by a policeman with an Uzi machine gun, and managed to convince him to give him an escort to the hospital, where he was immediately prepped for emergency surgery, the Pope having just been anointed by his secretary. The Pope, despite the fact that the bullet avoided both his abdominal aorta and the mesenteric artery, lost nearly three-quarters of his blood and thus suffered shock from near-exsanguination due to the intestinal perforation. He underwent almost six hours of emergency intestinal surgery, which required transfusions and a temporary colostomy (which later had to be reversed), at the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic (the trauma center affiliated with the medical school of the University of the Sacred Heart), which always keeps a suite of rooms reserved for the Pope's use. Several months later, he came down with a cytomegalovirus infection due to receiving some blood that was fresh and that had not been sufficiently prepared- because of the emergency, there had been no time. Upon encountering the Pope in Rome's Rebibbia Prison for the first time following the attempt, Ağca, a professional assassin, asked him how he had managed to survive. The Pope, who was conscious until going into surgery, suspected that he would live, thanks to what he earnestly believed to be the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Fatima (who, in one of her appearances to the three children, had prophesied that a "Bishop in white" would be attacked). Pope John Paul II was extremely grateful to Dr. Crucitti and the rest of his medical staff who he had consulted (including his old friend and personal physician, the Polish immunologist Professor Dr. Gabriel Turowski, who had come to Italy to give his expertise and who diagnosed the CMV infection, and Dr. Renato Buzzonetti, the official Papal physician, who would again seek out Dr. Crucitti's advice when the Pope developed a benign colonic tumor). The Pope personally returned from his vacation at Castel Gandolfo in August 1998 to deliver his condolences to the family when Dr. Crucitti passed away, and later personally celebrated his funeral and gave the homily (the doctor had a reputation for mentoring many future prominent physicians and surgeons at the Polyclinic, one of Italy's best hospitals).

Incarceration of Ağca

Ağca was sentenced, in July 1981, to life imprisonment in Italy for the assassination attempt, but was pardoned by president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in June 2000 at the Pope's request. He was then extradited to Turkey, where he was imprisoned for the 1979 murder of left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi and two bank raids carried out in the 1970s. Despite a plea for early release in November 2004, a Turkish court announced that he would not be eligible for release until 2010. Nonetheless he was released on parole on January 12, 2006.[4] However, on January 20, 2006, the Turkish Supreme Court ruled that his time served in Italy could not be deducted from his Turkish sentence and he was returned to jail.[5] Ağca was released from prison on January 18, 2010, after almost 29 years behind bars.[6]

Relationship with Pope John Paul

Following the shooting, Pope John Paul II asked people to "pray for my brother [Ağca] ... whom I have sincerely forgiven."[7] In 1983, he and Ağca met and spoke privately at the prison where Ağca was being held. Agca reportedly kissed the Pope's ring at the conclusion of their visit. The Pope was also in touch with Ağca's family over the years, meeting his mother in 1987 and his brother a decade later.

Although Ağca had been quoted as saying that "to me [the Pope] was the incarnation of all that is capitalism", and attempting to murder him, Ağca developed a friendship with the pontiff. In early February 2005, during the Pope's illness, Ağca sent a letter to the Pope wishing him well.

Motivations for the assassination attempt

Several theories exist concerning Mehmet Ali Ağca's assassination attempt. One, strongly advocated since the early 1980s by Michael Ledeen among others, is that the assassination attempt had originated from Moscow and that the KGB had instructed the Bulgarian and East German secret services to carry out the mission. The Bulgarian Secret Service was allegedly instructed by the KGB to assassinate the Pope because of his support of Poland's Solidarity movement, seeing it as one of the most significant threats to Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.

Ağca himself has given multiple conflicting statements on the assassination at different times. Attorney Antonio Marini stated: "Ağca has manipulated all of us, telling hundreds of lies, continually changing versions, forcing us to open tens of different investigations".[8] Originally Ağca claimed to be a member of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but they denied any ties to him.

Grey Wolves

Some people, notably Edward S. Herman, co-author with Frank Brodhead of The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection (1986), and Michael Parenti, felt Ağca's story was dubious, noting that Ağca made no claims of Bulgarian involvement until he had been isolated in solitary confinement and visited by Italian Military Intelligence (SISMI) agents. On September 25, 1991, former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman (now Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy) revealed that his colleagues, following hierarchical orders, had falsified their analysis in order to support the accusation. He declared to the US Senate intelligence committee that "the CIA hadn't any proof" concerning this alleged "Bulgarian connection".[1] Neither the Severino Santiapichi court, nor the investigation by judge Franco Ionta, found evidence that that SISMI planted Ağca's story. A French lawyer, Christian Roulette, who authored books blaming Western intelligence agencies for the assassination attempt, testified in court that documentary evidence he referred to actually did not exist.[9][10][11][12]

The Bulgarian secret services have always protested their alleged involvement and argued that Ağca's story was an anti-Communist plant placed by the Grey Wolves, the Italian secret service, and the CIA - all three of whom had co-operated in NATO's secret Gladio network.[citation needed] Gladio was at the time involved in Italy's strategy of tension, also followed in Turkey by Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish branch of Gladio[citation needed]. The Pope's assassination would hereafter have taken place in this frame[citation needed]. Edward Herman has argued that Michael Ledeen, who was involved in the Iran-Contra Affair and had alleged ties to the Italian P2 masonic lodge also linked to Gladio, was employed by the CIA to propagate the Bulgarian theory.[13] Indeed, Le Monde diplomatique alleged that Abdullah Çatlı, a leader of the Grey Wolves, had organized the assassination attempt "in exchange for the sum of 3 million German Marks" for the Grey Wolves.[14] In Rome, Catli declared to the judge in 1985 "that he had been contacted by the BND, the German intelligence agency, which would have promised him a nice sum of money if he implicated the Russian and Bulgarian services in the assassination attempt against the Pope". According to colonel Alparslan Türkes, the founder of the Grey Wolves, "Catli has cooperated in the frame of a secret service working for the good of the state".[1]

The "Bulgarian Connection"

Then KGB Director Yuri Andropov, was convinced that the Pope John Paul II's election was the product of an Anglo-German conspiracy orchestrated by Zbigniew Brzezinski to undermine Soviet hegemony in largely Catholic Poland and ultimately to precipitate the collapse of the entire Soviet Union. The Pope's announcement of a pilgrimage to Warsaw fueled Andropov's apprehension, with Andropov issuing a secret memorandum to Soviet schoolteachers:[15]

The Pope is our enemy. . . . Due to his uncommon skills and great sense of humor he is dangerous, because he charms everyone, especially journalists. Besides, he goes for cheap gestures in his relations with the crowd, for instance, [he] puts on a highlander's hat, shakes all hands, kisses children, etc. . . . It is modeled on American presidential campaigns. . . . Because of the activities of the Church in Poland our activities designed to atheize the youth not only cannot diminish but must intensely develop. . . . In this respect all means are allowed and we cannot afford sentiments.[15]

Ali Agca had made several trips to Sofia, Bulgaria, and stayed in a hotel favored by the Bulgarian (DS).[citation needed] In Rome he had also had contacts with a Bulgarian agent whose cover was the Bulgarian national airline office. Soon after the shooting, Sergei Antonov, a Bulgarian working in Rome for Balkan Air, was arrested based on Ağca's testimony and accused of being the Bulgarian agent who masterminded the plot. In 1986, after a three-year trial, he was found not guilty. According to the CIA's chief of staff in Turkey, Paul Henze, he later stated that in Sofia, he was once approached by the Bulgarian Secret Service and Turkish mafiosi, who offered him three million German mark to assassinate the Pope.[16]

American journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave claimed that the Bulgarians chose Ağca to supply themselves with plausible deniability; choosing a member of the Grey Wolves that had allegedly been involved with the local KGB in drug smuggling routes through Bulgaria to Western Europe would distance themselves because of the implausibility of the link.[17]

The Mitrokhin Commission's claims

Further information: Italian Mitrokhin Commission

According to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, documents recovered from former East German intelligence services confirm the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II was ordered by the Soviet KGB and assigned to Bulgarian and East German agents with the Stasi to coordinate the operation and cover up the traces afterwards, however, Markus Wolf, former Stasi spy-master, has denied any links, and claimed the files had already been sent in 1995.[18]

In March 2006, pending national elections, the controversial Mitrokhin Commission, set up by Silvio Berlusconi and headed by Forza Italia senator Paolo Guzzanti, supported once again the Bulgarian theory, which had been denounced by John Paul II during his travel to Bulgaria. Senator Guzzanti claimed that "leaders of the former Soviet Union were behind the assassination attempt", alleging that "the leadership of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate Pope John Paul" because of his support for Solidarity, relaying "this decision to the military secret services" (and not the KGB).[19] The report's claims were based on recent computer analysis of photographs that purported to demonstrate Antonov's presence in St Peter's Square during the shooting and on information brought by the French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, a controversial figure whose last feat was to indict Rwandese president Paul Kagame, claiming he had deliberately provoked the 1994 Rwandan Genocide against his own ethnic group in order to take the power.[20] According to Le Figaro, Bruguière, who is in close contacts as well with Moscow as with Washington, D.C., including intelligence agents, has been accused by many of his colleagues of "privileging the reason of state over law."[21]

Both Russia and Bulgaria condemned the report. "For Bulgaria, this case closed with the court decision in Rome in March 1986", Foreign Ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev said, while also recalling the Pope's comments during his May 2002 visit to Bulgaria.[22] Senator Guzzanti said that the commission had decided to re-open the report's chapter on the assassination attempt in 2005, after the Pope wrote about it in his last book, Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums. The Pope wrote that he was convinced the shooting was not Ağca's initiative and that "someone else masterminded it and someone else commissioned it". The Mitrokhin Commission also claimed Romano Prodi, a former Prime Minister of Italy, was the "KGB's man in Italy". At the end of December 2006, Mario Scaramella, one of the main informer of senator Guzzanti, was arrested and charged, among other things, of defamation. Rome's prosecutor Pietro Salvitti, in charge of the investigations concerning Mario Scaramella, cited by La Repubblica, showed that Nicolò Pollari, head of SISMI, the Italian military intelligence agency and indicted in the Imam Rapito affair, as well as SISMI n°2, Marco Mancini, arrested in July 2006 for the same reason, were some of the informers, alongside Mario Scaramella, of senator Paolo Guzzanti. Beside targeting Romano Prodi and his staff, this "network", according to Pietro Salvitti's words, also aimed at defaming General Giuseppe Cucchi (current director of the CESIS), Milan's judges Armando Spataro, in charge of the Imam Rapito case, and Guido Salvini, as well as La Repubblica reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D'Avanzo, who discovered the Yellowcake forgery affair.[23] The investigation also showed a connection between Scaramella and the CIA, in particular through Filippo Marino, one of Scaramella's closest partners since the 1990s and co-founder of the ECPP, who lives today in the US. Marino has acknowledged in an interview an association with former and active CIA officers, including Robert Lady, former CIA station chief in Milan, indicted by prosecutor Armando Spataro for having coordinated the abduction of Abu Omar, the Imam Rapito affair [24]

Spies in the Vatican

In 2009 journalist and former army intelligence officer John Koehler published Spies in the Vatican: The Soviet Union's Cold War Against the Catholic Church.[25] Mining mostly East German and Polish secret police archives, Koehler says the attempt was "KGB-backed" and gives details.[26]

A Vatican connection?

On June 26, 2000 Pope John Paul II released the "Third Secret of Fatima" in which he said that Ağca's assassination attempt was the fulfillment of this Secret. May 13 (the date of the assassination attempt) is the anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin Mary to the three children of Fatima, something the Pope has always regarded as significant, attributing his survival on that day to her protection. Some doubt the Church's full disclosure of the contents of this Secret, believing that it actually predicted the Apocalypse. While in prison on remand, Ağca was widely reported to have developed an obsession with Fatima and during the trial claimed that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ and called on the Vatican to release the Third Secret.

On March 31, 2005, just two days prior to the Pope's death, Ağca gave an interview to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.[27] He claimed to be working on a book about the assassination attempt. La Repubblica quoted Ağca claiming at length that he had accomplices in the Vatican who helped him with the assassination attempt, saying "the devil is inside Vatican's wall". He also said:

"Many calculating politicians are worried about what revealing the complete truth would do. Some of them fear that the Vatican will have a spiritual collapse like the Berlin Wall. Let me ask, why don't the CIA, the Sismi, the Sisde and other intelligence agencies reveal the truth about the Orlandi case?
Q: They say it's because there is still some uncertainty in the Emanuela Orlandi case.
Ağca: In the 1980's, certain Vatican supporters believed that I was the new messiah and to free me they organized all the intrigue about Emanuela Orlandi and the other incidents they won't reveal."

Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, disappeared at age 15 on June 22, 1983. Anonymous phone calls offered her release in exchange for the release of Ağca. Archbishop Paul Marcinkus was alleged to be part of the kidnapping, although no charges were ever laid.

A week after this interview, Associated Press reported Ağca denying having made such claims.[28]

In November 2010, Ağca publicly asserted that Cardinal Agostino Casaroli had been the man behind the assassination attempt on John Paul II in 1981.[29]

In fiction

The plot from the Tom Clancy novel Red Rabbit is largely centralised around the attempt on the Pope's life which is ordered by the KGB and carried out by a Bulgarian assassin also responsible for the murder of Georgi Markov[citation needed].

Mention of this assassination attempt was at the end of the anime Chrono Crusade.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Lee, Martin A. (3 March 1997 Template:Fr icon). "Les liaisons dangereuses de la police turque". Le Monde diplomatique. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) Cite error: The named reference "Diplo97" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ "1981 Year in Review: Pope John Paul II Assassination (sic) Attempt". United Press International (UPI)). 1981.
  3. ^ "Security Chief for the Vatican Was 'Guardian Angel' to Pope". Wall Street Journal. 2009-11-06. Retrieved 2009-11-06.
  4. ^ Newton, Paula (2006-01-12). "Man who shot pope freed". CNN.com. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 2006-01-14. Retrieved 2008-10-26.
  5. ^ Goktas, Hidir (2006-01-20). "Man who shot pope must return to jail: Turkish court". Reuters. Archived from the original on 2006-01-20.
  6. ^ "Man who shot pope released from prison". CNN. 2010-01-18. Retrieved 2010-01-18.
  7. ^ "Holy See defers to courts on possible release of would-be Papal assassin". Vatican City: Catholic News Agency. January 9, 2006.
  8. ^ 'Ali Agça revient à la liberté avec ses secrets', January 12, 2006, LibérationTemplate:Fr icon]
  9. ^ "Italian Judge Said to Drop Probe of Agca Being Coached". Washington Post. 1985-12-22.
  10. ^ Crovitz, Gordon (1986-01-08). "Pope Trial: What Secret Files?". Wall Street Journal.
  11. ^ Tagliabue, John (1986-01-15). "Court in Pope plot won't extend trial to hear testimony in U.S." New York Times.
  12. ^ Christian Roulette (1984). Giovanni Paolo II, Antonov, Agca. La pista. Rome: Edito da Napoleone.[page needed]
  13. ^ Lobe, Jim (2003-06-23). "Veteran neo-con advisor moves on Iran". Asia Times.
  14. ^ Nezan, Kendal (July 1998). "Turkey's pivotal role in the international drug trade". Le Monde diplomatique.
  15. ^ a b Remnick, David. "John Paul II", The New Yorker Magazine. April 11, 2004.
  16. ^ Paul B. Henze. The Plot to Kill the Pope, Holiday House, 1985.[page needed]
  17. ^ Arnaud de Borchgrave, The Attempted Assassination of John Paul II, April 6, 2005.
  18. ^ "Stasi Files Implicate KGB in Pope Shooting", Deutsche Welle, January 4, 2005.
  19. ^ "Soviets 'had Pope shot for backing Solidarity'". Daily Telegraph. 2006-03-03.
  20. ^ Rwanda : Bruguière incrimine Paul Kagamé, Le Figaro, 21 November 2006 Template:Fr icon
  21. ^ "Un juge provocateur", Le Figaro, 22 November 2006, p.2
  22. ^ "Soviet Union ordered Pope shooting: Italy commission". Reuters. March 2, 2006.
  23. ^ Il falso dossier di Scaramella - "Così la Russia manipola Prodi", La Repubblica, 11 January 2007 Template:It icon
  24. ^ "How one man insinuated himself into poisoning case", International Herald Tribune, 9 January 2007.
  25. ^ John Koehler, Spies in the Vatican, Pegasus, 2009. ISBN 978-1-60598-050-8
  26. ^ Publishers Weekly, review of 'Spies in the Vatican', May 11, 2009
  27. ^ "L'ultima verità di Ali Agca 'Avevo dei complici in Vaticano'". La Repubblica (in Italian). 2005-03-31. (English translation with some commentary: "The Latest Truth From Ali Agca: 'I had accomplices in the Vatican'"[dead link‍])
  28. ^ "Agca Denies Accusing Vatican of Complicity in Pope Shooting". Turkish Weekly. Associated Press. 2005-04-04.
  29. ^ ['Vatican ordered hit on Pope John Paul II' http://www.presstv.ir/detail/150432.html]

Further viewing

41°54′09.5″N 12°27′24″E / 41.902639°N 12.45667°E / 41.902639; 12.45667

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