Would-be assassin wants to visit tomb of St. John Paul II

Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot and wounded St. John Paul II in 1981, now says that he wants to visit the grave of the late Pontiff.

Agca, who spent 19 years in Italian prisons before being deported to his native Turkey, has been denied a visa to travel to Italy. But he claims that he wants to pay his respects at the tomb of the Pope who, after the shooting, came to visit him in a Rome prison cell.

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Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot and wounded St. John Paul II in a May 1981 assassination attempt, returned to the Vatican on December 27 to place flowers on the tomb of the deceased Pontiff.


In an interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica, Agca said that he had made the gesture “to say that [the assassination attempt, and the survival of John Paul II] is a miracle of Our Lady of Fatima.” He said that he would next travel to the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal.


Agca spoke to La Repubblica from Fiumicino airport outside Rome, explaining that Italian immigration authorities were sending him back to his native Turkey because he had entered Italy without proper documentation. He said that he would also travel to Portugal illegally, expressing confidence that he would be able to make the trip because he had the help of friends, whom he declined to identify.


Father Ciro Benedettini, a spokesman for the Vatican press office, said that Agca was free to visit the Vatican. He observed that there are no pending legal charges or restrictions against the former gunman, who was pardoned in 2000 for his attempt on the Pope’s life.


Agca said that he had hoped to meet with Pope Francis and other Vatican officials during his visit to Rome, but received no responses to his inquiries. He expressed gratitude, however, that he had been allowed to enter the Vatican basilica and visit the tomb of the man he had once sought to kill. An Italian television station showed video of his visit, evidently recorded by a cameraman who had been alerted to accompany Agca.


During his short visit to the tomb of St. John Paul II, Agca said, “Long live Jesus Christ.” He proclaimed aloud that Jesus is the only Savior of the world.


Agca—who has a long history of offering spectacular and contradictory accounts of the background behind his assassination attempt—told La Repubblica that he hoped to produce a documentary film that would tell the entire story, “from the role of the White House to that of the CIA, the Grey Wolves (a radical Turkish group), the accused Kremlin, the accused Vatican.”


However, Agca declined to answer a direct question regarding the sponsors of his 1981 assassination attempt, saying that “nobody believes what I say anymore.”

In a related development, Italian lawyers filed a petition asking for Agca to be detained for questioning about the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican employee, in 1983. Although Agca was in an Italian prison at the time of the girl’s disappearance, he recently claimed that she is alive and that some Vatican officials know the truth about her disappearance. An Italian court dismissed the petition, saying that Agca's story was not credible.

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