Pope John Paul II is shot in St. Peter's Square
On this day · 13 May 1981
A Turkish gunman opened fire on the pope before thousands of pilgrims, then watched as his target survived and forgave him.
On May 13, 1981, more than ten thousand pilgrims packed St. Peter’s Square for the pope’s weekly general audience. As John Paul II circled the crowd in an open vehicle, Mehmet Ali Agca, a 23-year-old escaped Turkish convict, raised a pistol and fired.
One bullet tore into the pope’s abdomen, narrowly missing vital organs; another struck his hand. He paled, collapsed into the arms of his aides, and was rushed to surgery, where doctors worked for hours and removed sections of his intestine. Two bystanders were also wounded. Agca was seized on the spot.
From his hospital bed, the pope publicly forgave the man who had tried to kill him.
The motive stayed murky—Agca cited grand geopolitical grievances, later floating a Bulgarian and Soviet conspiracy that was never proven. In 1983, John Paul II visited his attacker in prison. Agca served nearly two decades in Italy before being pardoned and deported to Turkey in 2000.
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