Adnkronos Rome, April 26 (Adnkronos) – His request to attend Pope Francis' funeral had caused a stir: Ali Agca, Wojtyla's attacker, finally released from prison in January 2010 after his extradition to Turkey, eventually declined, fearing that his coming to the Vatican for Bergoglio's funeral could be exploited and considered "an act of disturbance".
But he announced to Adnkronos: "I will come, even if at another time, to pray at the tomb of the pontiff and to fulfill a solemn promise."
"The Italian State has not officially responded to Agca's legitimate and motivated request to participate in the funeral," his special attorney, Riccardo Sindoca, explained to Adnkronos, "and he did not consider it possible to act differently and arbitrarily in these hours, if only out of respect for the mourning of Pope Francis, a mourning that he himself is experiencing in these hours as the last of the believers in prayer and in respectful silence." And this, Sindoca explains, despite the fact that Ali Agca believes he has "a solemn mission, as is known, and as he swore to John Paul II."
According to his special prosecutor, the man who shot John Paul II in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981 hopes that this "Jubilee will lay the foundations for all religions, in obedience to the wishes of Our Lady of Fatima, to work for the peace of peoples and thus for the good of all humanity": Agca, he emphasizes, "does not want his desire to pray at the tomb of the Pontiff - a desire that he believes is a direct expression of the Secret of Our Lady of Fatima - to be in any way understood as an act of disturbance to a solemn ceremony". Therefore, Sindoca assures, to "fulfill the solemn promise", Agca "lets it be known that he will come, but at another time, when his presence cannot be exploited as an act of disturbance or of mere and personalistic visibility, contrary to all his principles and to the message of love and peace and construction that Our Lady of Fatima wanted for him".