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Italian Panel Blames Pope Shooting on USSR

An Italian parliamentary commission released a draft report last week which concluded that "beyond any reasonable doubt", the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was the main backer of the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. Judicial probes into the incident have been long been closed, and he draft does not have any bearing on legal actions...long before his passing, Pope John Paul II forgave his attempted assassin and the Soviet Union no longer exists. An Italian court ruled there was not enough evidence to convict the Bulgarians allegedly working for the Soviets in the May 13, 1981 attempt.

A draft of the Italian report said "This commission believes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the leaders of the Soviet Union took the initiative to eliminate the (Polish) pope Karol Wojtyla (John Paul)." At the time the Pope was considered dangerous to Soviet interests because of his support for Poland`s Solidarity labor movement, which was the first free trade union in communist eastern Europe. The commission`s report says a photo proves a Bulgarian man acquitted of participating in the assassination attempt was in St. Peter`s Square when the pope was shot. It was suspected the Bulgarian secret service was working for Soviet military intelligence.

The convicted Turkish shooter, Mehmet Ali Agca, after his capture at first said he had been hired by the Soviets, though he later recanted and said it was unclear exactly who he was working for. Agca spent 19-years in an Italian prison for shooting the Pontiff. He is now in prison in Turkey for shooting a journalist. The Italian Senate Commission`s president, Sen. Paolo Guzzanti, says he decided to probe the shooting after John Paul wrote in his book "Memory and Identity: Conversations Between Millenniums" that "someone else planned it, someone else commissioned it."