Leo XIV in Türkiye” data-eio=”l”/>Mehmet Ali Agça, The man who shot Pope John Paul II in the Vatican in 1981, seriously wounding him, arrived in Nicaea, Turkey, with the intention to meet with Leo XIV, visiting this city this Friday, but he did not achieve his objective.
Agça, a former Turkish assassin, arrived on Thursday in Nicaea, the city where the pontiff offered an ecumenical prayer in memory of the council that was held there in the year 325, and declared to the press his intention to meet with Leo XIV “for a two or three minute talk”, the newspaper reported Liberty.
The man He posed for the press in front of the Byzantine Basilica of Hagia Sophia, converted into a mosque since 2011, and declared that he welcomed the Pope, underlining the importance of “maintain good relations with the Vatican.”
But on Thursday he left the city again, accompanied by the Police, who He began to establish numerous security measures in Nicaea to prepare for the Pope’s visit, who arrived at noon this Friday by helicopter from Istanbul, the newspaper reported Universal.
Mehmet Ali Agça sentenced to life imprisonment
Agça, a hitman from Türkiye’s far-right networks linked to the mafia, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Türkiye for having murdered journalist Abdi Ipekçi in 1979, but he escaped from prison with the probable help of state agents and in 1981 traveled to the Vatican, where he attacked John Paul II.
The pontiff visited him two years later in the Italian prison where Agça was serving a life sentence and forgave him and In 2000 the hitman was deported to Türkiye, where he served another 10 years. until he was released in 2010.
Agça spread a large number of contradictory explanations about the reasons for his attack against John Paul II and about those who commissioned it, with the latest version focusing on the fact that It was “a divine plan”, devised by the Vatican itself.
Depending on the occasion, the former hitman also declared himself Catholic or even protagonist of “the greatest miracle of Christianity, the secret of Fatima.”