Sunday, January 13, 2013

Pope Shooter Meets with Patriarch Bartholomew I; Mehmet Ali Agca Read Bible in Prison, Recants

Mehmet Ali Agca -- a Muslim who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in May 1981 -- met on January 7 with Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the Catholic Culture website reports today (January 13, 2013).

At the meeting -- held at Agca's request -- Agca told the Ecumenical Patriarch that he had spent many hours reading the Bible while in prison and that he asked God for forgiveness for attempting to assassinate the pope.

After his conviction in an Italian court for attempted murder of  Pope John Paul,  Agca spent 19 years in prison in Rome before he was released in 2000, as a part of a general amnesty at the prompting of Pope John Paul II himself.

He was returned to his native Turkey, where he served a separate sentence for an earlier murder conviction. He was finally released in January 2010.

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