ROME (CNS): The Turkish gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul has proclaimed himself an unwitting instrument” in a divine plan, after hearing of the third secret of Fatima which the Pope believes foretold the 1981 assassination attempt.
Mehmet Ali Agca, who is serving a life sentence in an Italian prison for shooting and seriously wounding the Pope in 1981, said through his lawyer on May 14 that he felt relieved from the weight of responsibility by the disclosure of the secret.
“I was an unwitting instrument in a mysterious design. Now I know this with certainty,” Agca was quoted as saying by his lawyer, Marina Magistrelli. His lawyer said Agca had watched TV coverage of the Pope’s Mass at Fatima, Portugal, on May 13 when Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano announced that the third secret, said to have been revealed by Mary to three children in 1917, involved a prediction of a war waged by atheistic systems against the Church.
The message also referred to a “bishop clothed in white” who “falls to the ground, apparently dead under a burst of gunfire”, Cardinal Sodano said. He said Pope John Paul II believes this foretold his being shot and seriously wounded in St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981 – the feast of Our Lady of Fatima.
The Pope met with Agca in his prison cell in 1983 and forgave the gunman.
Later, Agca began claiming that he was part of a divine design connected with the Fatima apparitions. He also made other claims: that he was Jesus Christ, that he was an angel, and that he was sent by God to announce the end of the world.
Agca at one point claimed that the papal shooting was carried out on the orders of Bulgarian intelligence officials. Bulgarian and Turkish defendants were acquitted in 1986, in a trial that featured incoherent outbursts by Agca.
