Why assassinate the pope

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Most Recent End or beginning? Nov 13, Pope John Paul II was a fervent anti-communist who supported the Solidarity trade union in his native Poland, which seemed to make him an appropriate target for the communists. In , despite these developments, the pope met with Mehmet in prison and offered him forgiveness. Further interrogations of Agca led to the arrest of three Bulgarians and three Turks, who went on trial in He explained that the Bulgarian scenario was concocted by Western intelligence officials, and that God had in fact led him to shoot John Paul II.

The first message allegedly predicted World War II , the second the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, and the third was still a Vatican secret in In , the Bulgarian and Turkish defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence. On May 13, , the 19th anniversary of the attempt on his life, the pope visited Fatima, Portugal. Mehmet Ali Agca, who had guessed the alleged Fatima-assassination connection in , was pardoned by Italian President Carolo Ciampi on June 14, Extradited to Turkey, he began serving the eight years remaining on the sentence for his murder of the Turkish newspaper editor.

He died two months later , on April 2, , at his home in the Vatican. Six days later two million people packed Vatican City for his funeral—said to be the biggest funeral in history. He began to develop slurred speech and had difficulty walking, though he continued to keep up a physically demanding travel schedule. In his final years, he was forced to delegate many of his official duties, but still found the strength to speak to the faithful from a window at the Vatican.

Pope John Paul II was canonized in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! During the battle, which was fought out in the southern suburbs of Glasgow, a cavalry charge Some English colonists arrive along the east bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.

Later he claimed to have found God, whilst later again he expressed fears for his own safety. Throughout all of this bewildering behaviour, it was difficult to establish whether Agca's contradictory statements were the expression of genuine mental instability or merely a cunning plan intended to hide the truth behind the shooting.

Despite his bizarre behaviour, many observers still believe that Agca was indeed an agent for East-Bloc secret services. In the early s, Pope John Paul II's staunch support of the Solidarity trade union in his native Poland struck one of the first blows in the gradual downfall of East-Bloc communism.

Pope John Paul himself paid little attention either to the speculation or the many different judicial investigations prompted by the shooting. Asked once by his old friend, Polish Cardinal Andrzej Deskur, about his apparent lack of interest in conspiracy theories, John Paul replied: "They don't interest me because it was the Devil who did this, and the Devil can conspire against us in a thousand different ways.

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