Pope’s book relives attempt on his life

IN his new book, Pope John Paul II for the first time describes publicly the moments after he was gravely wounded in 1981, saying he was fearful and in pain, but had “a strange feeling of confidence” that he would live.

The Polish Pontiff also said his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, “understood that above his power - the power of shooting and killing - there is a greater power”.

In the book, Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums, the Pope said he remembered being rushed to the hospital but didn’t recall much of what happened after he arrived because “I was almost on the other side”.

In the book, to be published on February 23, the Pope reflects on a range of topics and broadly compares abortion to the Holocaust, saying both derived from governments in conflict with God’s laws.

The most personal section of the book contains John Paul’s recollections of how his faith sustained him after being shot in the abdomen by the Turkish gunman on May 13, 1981, while riding in an open car in St Peter’s Square. He writes that he forgave his assailant before he reached the hospital.

John Paul recalled his belief that the bullet was steered away from vital organs by divine intervention - which he has credited to the Virgin Mary, who the Church says prophesised the event in the Fatima visions.

“Agca knew how to shoot and he shot with confidence, with perfection. But it was just as if someone guided this bullet,” the Pope said. He also described his meeting with the professional assassin at Christmas 1983 in a Rome prison.

The Pope did not say who he thought ordered the attempt, but called it “one of the last convulsions of the 20th century ideologies of force. Force stimulated fascism and Hitlerism, force stimulated communism”.