Shots Were Fired in St. Peter’s Square – The Assassination Attempt on John Paul II Seen from Warsaw and Vatican

fot. Audycje Radiowe/YouTube

“I have always been afraid that this would happen” — This is how Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the seriously ill Primate of Poland, reacted to the news about the assassination attempt against John Paul II. In the Gemelli polyclinic, they were fighting for the life of the Pope, wounded by bullets that Mehmet Ali Agca had shot. Today is the 40th anniversary of the attack that shook the world.

The Turk was aiming at his head, but then John Paul II leaned out of the popemobile towards a child. Sara Bartoli was 18 months old at the time; later the media would call her “the angel who protected the Pope.” It was shortly before 5:20 p.m.

“I can still see the pope leaning over to pick up and bless the little girl. I can still hear the gunshots and the flurry of hundreds of pigeons who, frightened, took to flight. And the screams of despair of thousands of people. John Paul II was hit in the stomach, the right elbow, and the index finger of his left hand. He slumped in my arms. He was suffering a lot,”. said Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Pope’s former personal secretary, in an interview with KAI, the Polish Catholic news agency.

The news did not reach the Archbishops’ Palace in Warsaw until the next day. Primate Stefan Wyszynski’s associates were afraid of how the gravely ill cardinal would take the news of the assassination attempt. “How did he react? He opened his eyes wide, and spoke just one sentence: ‘I have always been afraid that this would happen.’ Then he fell silent for a few hours,” Barbara Dembinska from the Primate Institute recalled in Milena Kindziuk’s book Memories, Interviews, and Texts about John Paul II.

The director of the Museum of John Paul II and Primate Wyszynski, Piotr Dmitrowicz, emphasized that the news of the assassination attempt was a huge blow to the dying cardinal. “The gravely ill Primate, unable to participate in Holy Mass at St. Anne’s Church on May 14^th, recorded a taped message asking everyone to pray for the healing of John Paul II. In a way, he offered his life, his health for John Paul II’s survival,” emphasized Piotr Dmitrowicz.

The historian also recalled that, despite such difficult circumstances, the Pope and the Primate had a last telephone conversation. On May 24^th, the Holy Father made his first attempt at a conversation. Unfortunately, the cable of the telephone was too short to reach the bedside stand of the ailing Primate.

“This last conversation between two great men, two friends, although the Primate was for a large part a mentor for John Paul II, the words were indeed already very personal. We have messages of Fr. Stanislaw Dziwisz and Maria Okońska, they simply thanked each other, blessed each other. This is an extremely moving but also dramatic moment because it was a dramatic time for all of Poland,” said the director of the Museum of John Paul II and Primate Wyszynski. Piotr Dmitrowicz recalled that on May 17^th, half a million people gathered for the “white march” in Krakow, praying for the intentions of John Paul II, but also for the Primate of the Millennium.

“The Church in Poland faced the prospect of losing its most important spiritual guides. The society united in fervent prayer for both of them. John Paul II, himself suffering, was aware that Cardinal Wyszynski’s final moments were coming. He called him a few days before the Primate’s death. That difficult conversation cost them both a lot,” recalled Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz in an interview with KAI.

Primate Stefan Wyszynski died on May 28^th, and John Paul II remained in the hospital for 22 days for rehabilitation. As Piotr Dmitrowicz emphasized, the departure and death of the Primate and the struggle for the life of John Paul II became another occasion during the communist period for the manifestation of the Poles’ community. The white march in Krakow mentioned above, in a way replaced the university’s student days, which were canceled when the assassination attempt on the Pope and the deterioration of Cardinal Wyszynski’s health were announced.

“The assassin’s bullet aimed at the World’s First Citizen hit us all. With sadness, seriousness, and indignation, we ask ourselves why the victim was a man who is a symbol of mercy, humanity, and love…,” was written in the declaration, prepared jointly by the Students’ Social Juvenile Committee, the Independent Students’ Association, and, interestingly, the Socialist Union of Polish Students.

“This community of half a million people in Krakow still makes an incredible impression today. The march from Błonia to the Main Square, where a Mass was celebrated at noon, was preceded by the ringing of the Sigismund Bell, which is rung at moments that are fundamental for the Poles. The atmosphere was similar at the funeral of Primate Wyszynski in Warsaw. Those hundreds of thousands of people, flowers spread in the shape of a cross on Victory Square, flowers thrown on the road along which the coffin with the Primate’s body was traveling (…) all this evokes that kind of communal element,” emphasized Piotr Dmitrowicz.

Today, we know how the Church experienced the suffering of these two prelates who have been raised to the altars. The beatification of Primate Stefan Wyszyński will be celebrated on September 12^th, in Warsaw, 40 years after his death and one month after the 120^th  anniversary of his birth.