ROME (CNS): The man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, jailed Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca, has called on the Vatican to reveal what he claims are undisclosed elements of the secret of Fatima.
Agca made the request in an “Open Letter to the Vatican” following the death of Carmelite Sister Lucia dos Santos, the last visionary from Fatima, Portugal.
Agca’s letter was sent to the Rome newspaper La Repubblica, which published it on February 20.
But a top cardianl at the Vatican dismissed Agca’s claims as ‘fantasy’.
For years, Agca has maintained that his shooting of the Pope was tied to the secrets of Fatima and to the end of the world.
In his latest letter, written from an Istanbul prison where he is serving time for his role in a previous shooting, Agca expressed his sadness at Sr Lucia’s death and said, “The secret of Fatima is connected with the end of the world”.
He called on the Vatican to “reveal to the world the name of the man considered by the Vatican as the ‘final Antichrist’, so that humanity can repent and prepare in a better way for the end of the world”.
At the Vatican, Portuguese Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, who is head of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes and a longtime acquaintance of Sr Lucia, dismissed Agca’s letter as pointless.
“In the writings of Sr Lucia there is no reference to the Antichrist. As we know, the writings refer to the persecutions against the Church of the last century, of anti-Christian ideologies, of many Christian martyrs who gave their lives, especially missionaries, but not of an Antichrist or similar figure,” the cardinal told La Repubblica.
