Forty-five years after the assassination attempt on St John Paul II, Pope Leo XIV paused in St Peter’s Square on 13 May to pray at the spot where the Polish pontiff was shot in 1981.
The attack, carried out by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, happened on the feast of Our Lady of Fátima – a connection John Paul believed was providential.
“One hand fired, another guided the bullet,” the pope later said, crediting Mary with saving his life. Historians and witnesses interviewed by OSV News said the assassination attempt deepened John Paul’s spiritual message on suffering, forgiveness and human dignity, while also strengthening his moral authority during the Cold War.
Two years after the assassination attempt, on 27 December, 1983, the pope visited Agca at Rome’s Rebibbia prison and publicly forgave him – a gesture that became one of the defining images of his pontificate.
Scholars say the attack became a defining turning point in both his pontificate and the eventual collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.
Father Miroslaw Cichon, director of the John Paul II Pontificate Documentation Center in Rome, said the assassination attempt marked a turning point – a “threshold moment,” giving John Paul II’s ministry a more “distinctly martyr-like and mystical” dimension.
