Ankara, Turkey, May 5, 2008 / 21:42 pm
Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II, is applying for Polish citizenship because, he says, he wants to live in the country of the late Pope, his “spiritual brother.”
Agca shot and seriously wounded Pope John Paul II at St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on May 13, 1981. The Pope met with Agca in an Italian prison two years later and forgave him for the attack.
Agca served 19 years in an Italian prison for the shooting and is presently serving a prison term in Turkey for killing a prominent journalist in Turkey in 1979. Though his motives are unclear, Agca belonged to the Grey Wolves, a Turkish extremist organization involved in political murders in the late 1970s. He is due to be released in 2010.
According to the Associated Press, Agca has addressed a petition to Poland’s Catholic president Lech Kaczynski, who has the power to grant or revoke Polish citizenship.