Pope wrote would-be assassin after 1981 shooting, archbishop says

Published: 2005-07-08

WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- Pope John Paul II wrote a letter to Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca after the would-be assassin shot the pontiff at the Vatican in 1981, the pope's former secretary said. The pope never mailed the letter, but met with Agca nearly two years after the assassination attempt, said Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz. "This letter exists, but it has not yet been released to anyone," Archbishop Dziwisz told Poland's Catholic information agency, KAI. Poland's Rzeczpospolita daily reported July 5 that the letter to Agca had been preserved in a collection of private notes used in Pope John Paul's last book, "Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums." The newspaper said the letter was "full of brotherly love" and had been intended for publication by the pope, who later changed his mind and decided to visit Agca in his jail cell instead.

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