WARSAWPoland (OSV News) — Before he started his general audiencePope Leo XIV stepped out of his popemobile on May 13 and walked over to pray beside a plaque marking the spot where history took a turn that shocked the world 45 years before.

St. John Paul II was shot precisely there on May 131981 — a day of the assassination attempt and one when Our Lady saved the pope’s life.

“Today we remember the memorial of Our Lady of Fátima,” Pope Leo addressed English-speaking pilgrims during his audience. “On this day 45 years ago an attempt was made on the life of Pope John Paul IIand for these reasons I dedicated my catechesis today to the Blessed Virgin Mary,” he added.

On that fateful day right before lunchJohn Paul II rode slowly through St. Peter’s Square in an open white jeepand he bent down to bless a small girl in the crowd. Seconds latergunshots rang out.

Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot the pope at close range. John Paul II collapsed into the arms of his secretarythen-Father Stanislaw Dziwisz. Blood soaked his white cassock as he was immediately rushed to Gemelli hospitalin what his personal secretary later recalled as “fight with time” to get the pontiff to the operating room.

“One hand firedand another guided the bullet,” John Paul II would later sayconvinced that the Our Lady of Fátima had spared his life. The attack took place exactly on the anniversary of the first apparition of the Virgin Mary to three shepherd children in FátimaPortugalin 1917. In 1982the pontiff traveled to Fátima to thank the Blessed Mother for saving his life. The bullet removed from his body was later placed in the crown of the Fátima statue.

Italian journalist Alberto Micheliniwho covered the pope for decadestold OSV News that for John Paul II the connection was never symbolic. “The Marian pope was saved thanks to the hand that diverted the deadly bullet — thanks to the hand of Mary,” Michelini said. “It was a true miracle.”

Father Miroslaw Cichondirector of the John Paul II Pontificate Documentation Center in Rometold OSV News that the center’s archives preserve moving testimonies of the worldwide prayers that followed the attackincluding an image of Our Lady of Czestochowa placed on the empty papal chair in St. Peter’s Square after the wounded pope was taken to the hospital.

Michelini linked the assassination attempt to the broader collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. “I covered the pope’s first trip to Poland,” he said. “From that extraordinary encounter with the crowds — something that worried the Kremlin greatly — we witnessedwithin 10 yearsfrom the Baltic to the Black Seathe collapse of the Berlin Wall.”

For many historiansthe geopolitical dimension of the attack can no longer be dismissed as speculation. Pawel SkibinskiPolish historian and former director of the Warsaw’s Museum of John Paul II and Primate (Cardinal Stefan) Wyszynskisaid Soviet authorities viewed the Polish pope as a destabilizing force almost immediately after his election in 1978. “The pontificate of John Paul II was undoubtedly a factor changing the situation of believers in the Eastern bloc,” Skibinskiwho is a professor of the University of Warsawtold OSV News.

He said Soviet intelligence services closely monitored Vatican outreach to Catholics behind the Iron Curtain. “We do not have proof of a direct Politburo decision ordering the elimination of Karol Wojtyla,” Skibinski saidmentioning the highest executivepolicymaking body within a Soviet communist party. But the beginning of coordinated activity by Soviet and Bulgarian services around Agca is a historical fact.

Skibinski pointed to findings from investigations conducted by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance indicating that Agca — after escaping from a Turkish prison — underwent training linked to Soviet intelligence networks in TehranIran. “The so-called Bulgarian trail is not speculation anymore,” Skibinski said. “From a historical point of viewthere is no doubt.”

Yet the pope’s survival may have ultimately strengthened his authority rather than weakened it.

“The fact that he paid with his own blood for the truths he proclaimed increased his credibility,” Skibinski said. The attack transformed John Paul II into a global moral figure during one of the most fragile phases of the Cold War.

“It is a very important date in the pontificate,” Michal Senkdirector of the Center for the Thought of John Paul IIbased in Warsawtold OSV News the assassination attempt intensified themes already present in Cardinal Wojtyla’s spirituality. “It was not a radical change of direction,” he said. “But after the attack he devoted even more attention to sufferingpenance and forgiveness.”

Two years after the assassination attempton Dec. 271983the pope visited Agca at Rome’s Rebibbia prison and publicly forgave him — a gesture that became one of the defining images of his pontificate.

Michelini said the pope’s embrace of Agca became stronger than any speech about forgiveness. “Karol Wojtyla was a man of gestures,” he said. “His ability to speak to the world even without words transformed him into one of the most extraordinary natural leaders of our era.”

StillSenk cautioned against romanticizing Agca or describing the prison meeting as reconciliation. “Agca never asked for forgiveness,” he said. “John Paul II forgave him without being asked. That is something radically evangelical.”

Senk described the Turkish gunman as “a professional killer” and “a compulsive liar,” insisting the burden of forgiveness rested entirely on the popewho asked Italy to grant him official pardon to his assassin in 1999 — eventually granted to Agca in the Jubilee Year 2000 by the Italian president.

Father Miroslaw Cichon told OSV News that the assassination attempt left a lasting mark on John Paul II’s teachingespecially in his 1984 apostolic letter “Salvifici Doloris,” on the Christian meaning of sufferingwritten in 1984 “He linked his own fate and the fate of the world even more closely to Mary and the message of Fátima,” the priest said. “The pope’s physical suffering became an integral part of his teaching,” Father Cichon told OSV News.

“That suffering deepened his relationship with U.S. President Ronald Reagan,” Skibinski told OSV News“who had survived an assassination attempt just weeks earlier.” The two men did not form a kind of secret allianceSkibinski saidbut they did share a common commitment to defending religious freedom and human dignity in Eastern Europe.

Senk noted that even after recoveringJohn Paul II never fully regained the robust health of his early years. “From that pointhe became a man who suffered more often and more visibly,” Senk said. Yet he did not retreat. Securityhoweverchanged forever. The open vehicle in St. Peter’s Square gave way to the glass-enclosed popemobile.

On March 251984John Paul II consecrated the world — including Russia — although not named specifically in the consecration text — to the Immaculate Heart of Maryfulfilling a request tied to the Fátima apparitions.

Weeks lateron May 13a massive explosion at a Soviet naval base in Severomorsk destroyed a large portion of the Northern Fleet’s missile stockpile. Soviet officials blamed a cigarette; no Western government claimed responsibility.

Senk cited the episode as an example of symbolic links many Catholics drew between Fátima and the weakening of Soviet power.

“The coincidence of dates is striking,” historian Skibinski told OSV News. He and others noted that John Paul II viewed history through a spiritual lenswhere grace and geopolitics were intertwined. Father Cichon added that in his 2005 book “Memory and Identity,” the pope interpreted the assassination attempt “above all in theological terms.”

By the end of the 1980sthe Berlin Wall had fallen and communist regimes across Eastern Europe had collapsed. Two years laterthe Soviet Union dissolved.

Iconic Italian television journalist Michelini told OSV News: “Perhaps the full truth about the assassination will never emergebut it was clear that the Slavic pope had become a destabilizing force for the last empire.”

Father Cichon added that the assassination attempt marked a turning point — a “threshold moment,” giving John Paul II’s ministry a more “distinctly martyr-like and mystical” dimension.

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