All language subtitles for Spy.Ops.2023.S01E04.WEBRip.NF_HI.en

[dark, ominous music plays]

[man in Italian] I wanted to leave
a mark on history and then leave.

[bell tolling]

What I had in mind
was to shoot the Queen of England.

There was Reagan,
but Reagan had already been shot.

So the only one left was the pope.

[in English] Do not be afraid.

Do not be afraid.

Open your hearts.
Open up your hearts to Christ.

[reporter]
St. Peter's Square in Vatican City

is where he has shown himself regularly
to countless thousands of the faithful.

Here and on his many trips abroad,
he has scorned security measures,

thrusting himself within touching distance
of the people he loves.

[in Italian] My intention was to kill
the pope and commit suicide.

This was my precise plan.

I remember everything.

[tense music plays]

[music fades]

[dark, dramatic music plays]

[man in Italian] I remember May 13.

When I woke up,

I went to Piazza Repubblica.

[crowd cheering]

Indeed, it was a summer day.

There were tens of thousands of people.

I was like a tourist.

I went near the obelisk

and was approached by
a plainclothes policeman.

He looked at me for several minutes.

I looked at him.

Then he went away.

[crowd chatter]

I heard this clamor,

"Long live the pope!"

A force, something inexplicable
pulled me forward.

There were so many people shouting,

"Long live the pope!"

And so, as the pope's first round passed,

it was impossible to do anything
because there was a child in the way.

It would have been terrible to shoot her.

Then he went around the second time,

and what had already been written
indeed happened.

[dramatic musical sting]

[tense, foreboding music plays]

[two gunshots]

I probably would have shot more...

but the incredible thing
is that the gun jammed.

After two shots, it jammed.

[in Polish] I can remember how the pigeons

flew up in alarm,

and one could see
the pope was losing his strength.

We realized that he was injured,
and he slumped to one side.

I supported him
and asked if he was in pain.

He said yes, and pointed to the place.

[panicked clamoring]

The bullet went through his whole body.

It fell to the ground in front of me,
between me and him.

[man in Italian] After the gun jammed,

I dropped it and someone caught me.

A strong hand.

I learned that it was a nun, Lúcia.

[in Polish]
Basically, the world stopped spinning.

[ominous music playing]

[clamoring continues]

AGOSTINO GEMELLI POLYCLINIC

QUEEN MARGARET HOSPITAL

[reporter]
Pope John Paul is making steady progress,

but he's not yet out of danger.

[in Italian] The postoperative recovery

of John Paul II has happily ended.

His organs and systems function normally.

[dramatic music plays]

[in French]
I am a journalist of Bulgarian origin.

I have been on this case for ten years.

I was interested in the attack
against John Paul II

immediately after the fall
of the Berlin Wall.

The new democratically-elected
government in Bulgaria had decided,

at the request of the United States,
to open a new investigation into

the attempted assassination
of John Paul II.

Very quickly,
after his arrest on St. Peter's Square,

Ali Ağca is presented to the judges.
A very quick investigation takes place.

He says he acted alone.

A fairly speedy trial is organized,

in which he is sentenced
to life imprisonment.

[judge in Italian]
Mehmet Ali Ağca is found

guilty of the alleged crimes

and convicted to life imprisonment.

[Ougartchinska]
The attack on John Paul II,

there is a whiff of conspiracy,

a whiff of espionage around all of this,

which, indeed, has fascinated many people.

But if there are so many conspiracies,

it is also because there are
many secret services

that got involved in this case,

which is the most emblematic case
of the Cold War era.

[tense, dramatic music plays]

[in Italian] A lone wolf is perfect

because he cannot be associated with
an organization like the Grey Wolves,

which is fascist,
criminal, and mafia-related.

[indistinct chanting]

[Ağca]
The Grey Wolves that were, let's say

nationalists, they wanted to restore

an international Pan-Turkist unity.

The leader of this party,

Alparslan Türkeş,
who is also called the Başbuğ, the Führer,

had collaborated with the Gestapo
in the time of the Second World War.

This made the Grey Wolves a kind of

alchemy between Turkish nationalism,

extreme right-wing ideas,
fascist and Nazi ideas,

with the conviction that it was necessary
to defend a pure Turkish race

and to get rid of
all those who were Kurds,

Armenians, or Christians,
since they have another religion.

[in Italian] In Turkey, there was
a possibility of a communist revolution.

It was necessary to stop them,

using good or bad means,
with assassinations, murders.

In this way, the Grey Wolves
were exploited for these misdeeds.

Essentially, they were employed by the CIA

in the war on communism.

[Ougartchinska in French] The Grey Wolves
were those who had been used

in the "stay-behind" network in Turkey.

The "stay-behind" was set up
at the end of the Second World War

on the initiative
of the United States and the Pentagon,

under the auspices of NATO.

It was a matter of creating

a whole network
of ultra-secret sleeper cells

from violent right-wing extremist groups

all over the NATO member countries,

recruiting young people
while training them,

and they could be used

in case the Soviet Union
tried to invade Europe again.

[reporter in English] These young Turks,
until the title was made illegal,

called themselves the "Grey Wolves."

And there's a link, albeit indirect,

between Türkeş
and the man who tried to kill the pope.

[Islamic call to prayer
plays over loudspeaker]

[Ağca in Italian]
I have always been, let's say,

on the side of the working class,

because I come from
a family of peasants, laborers.

[in French] In the neighborhood,
where he plays and goes to school,

he meets, as a child,
his friend, Oral Çelik,

with whom he will remain friends
throughout his life.

Together they will also discover
the ideology of the Grey Wolves.

Ali Ağca will soon make a name
by completing a hit

ordered by the Grey Wolves,
killing the chief editor

of the liberal newspaper Milliyet,
Abdi İpekçi.

It was after that time
that his real career as a terrorist began.

[in Italian]
I ended up in the Kharkiv military prison.

It was virtually impossible
to escape from there

without help from the inside.

Someone did it
for the love of the Grey Wolves.

I had a gun with me when I escaped.

I was determined.

If something happened, I had 14 bullets.

I would have killed
anyone in my way and then myself.

[Ougartchinska in French] He simply walked
out of prison disguised as a prison guard.

His friends, the Grey Wolves
and those helping the Grey Wolves,

gave him what he needed.

He passed through
four doors, four checkpoints.

His lifelong friend,
Oral Çelik, was outside waiting in a car.

He gets in and leaves.

[dramatic music plays]

[in French] I was the one who got Ağca
out of prison, and then we fled.

That's when we wrote
that threatening letter to John Paul II.

[Ougartchinska in French]
The Milliyet newspaper publishes

Ali Ağca's letter,

which clearly says,

"I escaped from prison
to kill the leader of the Crusaders,

Pope John Paul II,
who is coming to Turkey,

who comes to tread the soil of Turkey."

[Ağca in Italian] "The pope must not come.
Otherwise, I will kill him."

"The only reason I escaped
is to attempt to assassinate the pope."

[in French]
The idea of attacking John Paul II

was, of course, linked to
the ideology of the Grey Wolves.

They were convinced
that Christians should be eliminated.

And since he was the leader of Christians,

the pope, it was not surprising

that they decided to attack John Paul II.

[Ağca in Italian]
When I escaped, I went to Ankara,

then I went to Erzurum,

and finally to Iran.

I traversed the mountains
to Iran with an alcohol smuggler.

[in French]
Very quickly, Ağca returned to Turkey.

From there, they will seek to find him
new passports, a new identity,

and to organize his trip,
this time to Europe.

And Ağca first passed through Bulgaria.

[tense, dramatic music plays]

Bulgaria is a transit destination,

a crossing to get to Europe.

[in Italian] After a while,

I found a Turkish passport,
the same passport

that I used on the day
of the assassination attempt on the pope.

[in French] At the time, Sofia was
a haunt for all kinds of traffickers

of weapons, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes.

[tense music plays]

[knocking]

Ali Ağca knocks on the door of room 911

in a luxury hotel in Sofia.

It is in this hotel
that he socializes with many other Turks

who are, more or less,

implicated in the affair
of the attack on John Paul II.

They gave him money.

[in Italian] Ah, the Vitosha Hotel.
That's where I met Omar Mersan.

He's a fixer,
a smuggler, a friend of mine.

Everything else is fiction,

a novel, let's say.

[dark, ominous music plays]

[Ougartchinska in French] And he will go
to Germany several times. And to Austria.

There were many Grey Wolves members
who were based in Vienna.

The commando started to look for weapons.

It is obvious that, by recommendation
of certain secret services,

they are directed to an arms dealer.

[in Italian]
We bought the gun in Vienna.

We actually bought two guns,

for €2,000 or €3,000, I don't remember.

Then it turned out that he was a Nazi.

The gun dealer was a Nazi.

It was a coincidence, probably.

[Ougartchinska in French]
They buy four guns.

And not just any guns.
They are 9mm Brownings.

They are extremely powerful weapons
that can kill for sure.

Ali Ağca takes two.

[whistle blows]

[tense, suspenseful music plays]

[in Italian] So we returned to Rome.

We carried out the attack on the pope.

[dramatic percussive music plays]

The secret service of the Soviet Union,

the KGB, must surely have been involved
in the attempt to assassinate the pope.

There was a fear that John Paul II

might contribute to the dissolution
of the Soviet empire, of the Soviet Union.

Several years before John Paul II's
election, the KGB had already anticipated

the election of Karol Wojtyła as pope.

[crowd cheering]

[in Latin] We have a pope.

Cardinal Wojtyła.

[Ragona in Italian] John Paul II
was the first foreign pope to follow

a traditional series of Italian popes
that lasted many centuries.

And this foreign pope
hailed from Eastern Europe,

then under the communist regime.

The Soviet Union wanted to keep
Poland under its influence,

to keep it in check.

But John Paul II gave courage
to the Poles who, in some way,

had a revolutionary attitude
against the regime.

They rebelled, and we know about
the massive demonstrations

organized by Solidarity,
the Polish syndicate.

[reporter in English]
A nationwide strike, led by Lech Wałęsa,

shook Poland to its communist foundations.

[gentle orchestral music plays]

Wałęsa and his followers
won a revolutionary concession.

For the first time in a Marxist state,
the government accepted

the right of workers
to organize independent unions.

[Ragona] And when John Paul II is elected,
the KGB instantly runs for cover.

There are plans and talk of measures

to counter this violent anti-communist,

namely John Paul II.

There were plans
to infiltrate the Vatican,

capillary infiltration
of the chief rooms inside the Vatican,

by men affiliated with the KGB.

[ominous choral music plays]

[in Italian] Obviously, as pope,
being a great center of power

and having the ability to influence
almost the whole world

inevitably makes you
the center of interest

of all the secret services in the world.

[Ragona] Those years following the attack

were very difficult
in international politics.

The Vatican, at that time,
was a den of spies.

Spies from all over the world.

There were KGB spies.

There were infiltrators from the Polish
and the Czechoslovak intelligence,

the German Stasi.

There were men from the CIA.

In the Vatican,
the most active secret services

were certainly those from the East,
from Eastern Europe.

My name is Tomasz Turowski.

I'm a retired colonel

from the Polish secret services.

I was 20 years old.

I was a student.

The colonel received me and said,

"If you want to work for
the Polish intelligence services,

I support you."

"You have 24 hours to decide."

"And forget this meeting."

Twenty-four hours later, I said yes.

I was number 10682.
I had already received orders.

"We have decided that you will enter

the Jesuit religious order."

"You will pursue a Jesuit career

to access
strategic information about NATO."

They said, "Listen."

"The spiritual fathers and confessors
from all the special services

that are responsible
for the security of NATO bases in Italy

are, in fact, largely Jesuit priests."

"And you have to get all the way there."

"From there you can draw information

which cannot be obtained by other means."

It must be said that he had known
John Paul II even before arriving in Rome,

when he was the archbishop of Krakow.

Hence, there were ties
between the families,

between his family and John Paul II.

Therefore, as a mole, he managed
to arrive at the Vatican, in Rome,

with a recommendation from Karol Wojtyła,
the cardinal of Krakow.

But when, in 1978,
John Paul II was elected pope,

his mission changed dramatically.

Because the orders
received from that moment

were directed at knowing
everything about John Paul II,

whose physical elimination, as we know,
had definitely been planned by the KGB

should John Paul II
interfere with their plans.

Turowski is there
to understand what John Paul II does,

how he moves,
where he goes, what he thinks.

But Turowski says
he is there to protect him

and ensure that security becomes stronger
so as to avoid an attack on him.

When Wojtyła became eligible for papacy,

my headquarters
told me almost immediately,

"You have to do everything
to ensure the safety of the pope."

Before the attack,

I was looking at a report
from the Vatican surveillance service.

There were things unheard of.

During the Wednesday audiences,

they were alongside the car,
the popemobile,

but there was nobody
inside the popemobile, which is essential.

Their duty in case of a crisis,
is to cover, with their own bodies,

the object they have to defend.

The pope asked me,
"Tomasz, what is your real mission?"

I replied that my mission
is to serve the country

and look after
the safety of the Holy Father.

[Ragona] In fact, according to
Tomasz Turowski's version,

it was important for the Soviet bloc

to make sure
that if anything happened to the pope,

the blame would not fall on them.

[dark, dramatic music plays]

[in French] Two months after
the beginning of his sentence,

Ali Ağca asks to make new revelations.

[in Italian] I have spent
many years working on this case.

Despite all the disappointments,

I never lost my enthusiasm.

I would still continue today.

Right from the start,
Ali Ağca has only play-acted,

almost continuously.

He thought he was leading us by the hand

and led us to a certain place
and then pushed us away.

At the time,
this Bulgarian lead quickly emerged,

and it had its origin in the statements
made by Ali Ağca himself.

[tense, suspenseful music plays]

Respond to the affirmation...

I confirm everything I said.

The assassination
of the pope was desired by

the Bulgarian secret service,
and we, the Turks,

acted at the instigation
of the Bulgarian secret service.

[in French] Ali Ağca is someone

who has an animal instinct

for finding a way to get out of situations

and to work out how to negotiate,

to say what one wants to hear

in order to get what he wants in return.

He's very determined.

Ali Ağca receives
a visit from the secret service,

but also from a businessman
accompanied by an American.

Ağca himself says
he doesn't know who it was.

But they very clearly make him understand
that they will give him

the elements necessary
to incriminate the Bulgarians.

[in Italian]
Concerning this Bulgarian lead,

we know it was a project
which the CIA was involved in.

I believe that even the Pentagon
and the White House were involved,

because President Reagan
had allegedly required the CIA bosses

to find evidence that the Kremlin
had ordered the attack on the pope.

[Ougartchinska in French]
We were at the height of the Cold War.

Ronald Reagan had just taken office.

It was an opportunity
to strengthen the confrontation

between the two blocs
and the doctrine which,

when the case
of the Bulgarian connection bursts,

becomes the number one concern
of the United States,

who, based on this,
declare war on the evil empire.

In fact, the attack on John Paul II

fueled the doctrine of the evil empire,

which guided the strategy
and relations between the two blocs

throughout the decade of the 1980s.

[in English] I would rather see
my little girls die now,

still believing in God,

than have them grow up under communism

and one day die
no longer believing in God.

The CIA got a new director, William Casey,
who was an extreme right-wing ideologue,

and he wanted a special assessment

on the fact the Soviets were involved
in the plot to kill the pope.

[in French] There are also articles

that appear in the press,
by Claire Sterling,

who was close to Casey,
the boss of the CIA at that time.

He was fascinated
by her writings on terrorism,

so she signs an article designating
the KGB and the Bulgarian network.

[in English] The fact is the Bulgarian
secret service could not have acted alone.

We have the testimony of a former director
of the Bulgarian secret service.

But the Bulgarian services
are the favorites of the KGB

for operations of this kind
because they are so loyal and reliable

and that they are staffed
at every level with Soviet functionaries.

One thing the Operations Directorate
was trying to do on that operational level

was to embarrass the Soviets
by making accusations

of their involvement with the papal plot.

This was a classic case of blowback.

The CIA put this information
in the European press,

Claire Sterling read the European press,

she put it in her book
and newspaper articles.

It came back to the United States,
which is one of the real risks

of having a secret intelligence agency
in a democracy.

It's not supposed to work that way.

[in Italian]
There was talk of a Bulgarian lead

because Bulgarian citizens were involved
and also ended up on trial.

There is one man in particular,
Sergei Antonov.

This Bulgarian was even arrested
and brought to trial.

[reporter] First to appear in one of
the special cages was Sergei Antonov,

one of three Bulgarians indicted,
but the only one in the dock.

The other two are back home.

Two Turkish co-conspirators,

Musa Celebi and Ömer Bagci,
are also on trial.

The problem with the case
against the Bulgarians

is it depends entirely
on the word of Ali Ağca.

He's changed his story
several times already,

and as this extraordinary trial begins,

no one knows
what he's going to say this time.

[Ragona in Italian]
On the day of the attack of the pope,

Antonov was in St. Peter's Square
with Ali Ağca.

This photograph.
Is this person Antonov or not?

I think that it is possible.

I don't rule it out.

So why did you tell us it was Antonov?

[in Bulgarian] There is only one truth.

[translator in Italian]
There is only one truth.

[in Bulgarian] I am innocent.
I have nothing in common

with all these stories
of which I am accused.

I have never seen, I do not know,

I have never met
the person who accuses me.

[in Italian]
At some point, the investigation revealed

that the photos taken were not of Antonov.

They said this was a secret service man.

Then someone revealed that he was

a tourist or a pilgrim, a Hungarian.

[in French] So it's a total fiasco.

The Bulgarian connection
collapses entirely during the trial.

Curiously, the trial ends

with an odd court decision,

meaning that Antonov
and the other two defendants

are acquitted due to a lack of evidence.

[in Italian] The hypothesis
that the Bulgarian secret service,

and by implication the Soviet KGB,

could have been behind
the assassination attempt

became weaker and weaker
during the course of our investigations.

[in French] After two and a half years
of investigation, the judges realized

that he had lied no less than 103 times.

[tense music plays]

[in Italian] There is a photo
dated May 10, 1981, that portrays

Ali Ağca at a parish in Rome,
during a mass conducted by John Paul II.

It is three days

before the attempted murder
of John Paul II.

And there is Ali Ağca,
a few steps from the pope.

[man] In order to find out
whether Ağca was present

at one of the Vatican ceremonies,

we went to great lengths
to make inquiries.

We went through all the photos
that our police has taken,

to see whether Ağca appeared at any
of the many functions held in the Vatican.

And we found something.

We recognized Ağca in one photo
close to the San Tommaso d'Aquino church,

on the outskirts of Rome
when the pope is visiting.

I also asked the pope's photographer,

who took that photo,

to double-check it and tell me
who he sees in that photo.

And he has no doubts.
That man is Ali Ağca.

But why was he there? Who let him in?

It's absolutely impossible,
because I disembarked at Termini station.

I arrived at nine or ten
in the morning on Sunday,

with a suitcase in my hand.

I went to the Isa boarding house
around noon,

so there was no time
to go to the parish of St. Thomas.

That photo? You can see that's not me.

The so-called Vatican lead,

according to which
senior officials in the Vatican hierarchy

wanted the elimination of John Paul II.

I believe that John Paul II had also made
some enemies within the Vatican

because he had decided to support,
also on an underground level, Solidarity.

Why was there talk of a Vatican lead?

Perhaps because it was known
there were issues on the Eastern policy,

on how to relate to the Soviet Union.

[in French] There were multiple enemies.

My belief is that it is related to

the Vatican Bank crash,
to the billions that disappeared.

There is a very, very big financial
scandal linked to the Vatican Bank.

We realized that it was actually used
for money laundering and wiring.

It is believed that the mafia
also used it to launder a lot of money.

And finally, we wondered,
regarding the money of the Vatican,

who manages it and how?

And it bothered a lot of people

that John Paul II decided to
throw the cat among the pigeons.

He had to do it
because this scandal of the Vatican Bank,

the authorities were looking into it.

It was becoming an international scandal,
and he had to do something.

Finding people crazy enough

to want to kill the pope
is tied to the Vatican money.

[reporter]
The Vatican say they were never involved

in dealings with the Ambrosiano Bank,

that they are only paying out
£170 million in good faith.

One banker in Rome this morning
described that as expensive innocence.

[Turowski in Italian]
If the mafia was behind it,

then one billion or 1.5 billion

disappeared from the account
of Banco Ambrosiano during the bankruptcy.

I believe that John Paul II was not aware

of Banco Ambrosiano's involvement,
the mafia, and the laundered money

which was then also sent to Poland.

[reporter in English]
The secret deal was hammered out

behind the closed doors
of the Vatican Bank.

It was a gentlemen's agreement,
nothing on paper, no treaties,

just a transfer of money
in return for certain guarantees.

[in French] It was a kind of tax haven.

The Vatican was used for tax evasion,
but also to launder money,

whether by the mafia or others.

And it was very practical.

[in Italian] So my theory is that
there was no will to get rid of the pope,

but only to terrify him.

The attack was the last warning,

because if one wanted to kill the pope,

it would have been enough
to use bullets with mercury.

And then just a wound,
even if it was not dangerous,

would be fatal.

You can't negotiate with a dead man,

but you can with a frightened one.

Yes, indeed.

[Ragona] There were microphones
placed in various offices of the Vatican.

Cardinal Agostino Casaroli
was the secretary of state.

It has been confirmed by a document
of the Italian secret services

that bugs were found inside his apartment.

He was being spied on.

Bugs were found, microphones.

Those rooms were being listened to.

And even more serious,

John Paul II was also being listened to.

It was clear that there were
microphones in his apartment as well.

[Turkowski] What intel could be obtained
with these bugs,

possibly combined with other information
on his daily habits

and possibly his state of health?

[dramatic music plays]

It could be someone against the pope.

This one or another one,
they would also like to eliminate

not only Pope Ratzinger,
but also Pope Francis inside the Vatican.

[man]
When we followed the "internal leads,"

we encountered a few stumbling blocks,

in part because answering
many of our questions

would have impinged
on Vatican sovereignty.

There are small elements that suggest

that there may have been something,
perhaps not an order,

but a tacit agreement
within some dark power

that wanted the pope to be eliminated.

[Ağca] In my case, there was nothing.

There is no Vatican conspiracy.

[tense, dramatic music plays]

[Ragona in Italian]
How many shots were fired that day?

Several inquiries
have risen up around this issue

of how many gunshots
were fired by Ali Ağca.

He has always claimed to have fired twice,

and that when he was about
to fire the third,

which was supposed to be the deadly one,

his gun jammed.

There were, however, other witnesses

who said they heard more gunshots,
at least one more gunshot.

-[dramatic music continues]
-[crowd chatters]

[in French] Throughout the investigation
into the attack on John Paul II,

the judges, who tried very hard,

wanted to know
if there was another shooter.

And that's why they needed to recover

this alleged third bullet
which had been fired during the attack

and which had found itself
embedded in the door of the popemobile.

[in Italian] There was a photographer,
a man who was in St. Peter's Square,

that had taken pictures of the pope.

Apparently, in one of his photos,
he managed to capture a man,

Oral Çelik, another Turk,
a member of the Grey Wolves,

fleeing St. Peter's Square.

He is photographed from behind,
holding a gun,

perhaps the one
which fired the third shot,

considering that Ali Ağca's gun jammed.

I made an enlargement of the photo.

Are you sure it's Oral Çelik?

Yes, certainly.

Do you recognize the person in the photo?

Yes, it's Oral Çelik.
I've been saying that for three years.

Mm?

I've been saying it for three years
that it's Oral Çelik.

It's not another person.

On this subject, during the period
in which he collaborated,

Ağca was very precise.

He stated

that there were two shooters

who planned this attack on the pope,

himself and Oral Çelik.

When the pope
started his tour of the square,

he and Oral Çelik

were each placed on one side of the aisle.

[Ağca] But you see this picture,

this... who appears to be
running away with a gun in his hand

is a plainclothes Italian policeman.

Here. This is the first time I reveal this

because there was
no occasion to reveal it.

This is a plainclothes policeman
who escaped

that day to the Vatican.

Who knows for what reason or on duty?

[translator in French]
Listen to me carefully.

Forget everything you've heard
before about the Bulgarian lead, all that.

When the pope arrives
in front of the crowd,

the shooters shoot him with two guns.

Two other men were there with Ağca.

[ominous music plays]

[in French]
So examining that bullet was critical.

It was an exhibit to prove
that there had been another shot,

that this shot
possibly came from another Browning,

and from there, to be able to complete
the scenario of the attack,

to prove that there was
an accomplice and a conspiracy,

and then to investigate
the question of the sponsors.

[man in Italian]
Here is a semi-automatic pistol

with a cartridge case that was found

at the crime scene on the square,
and a projectile.

These are the two components
that make up a live cartridge.

We showed that a similar gun and cartridge

were used in the assassination attempt
on the pope.

One thing stands out.

This projectile has a jacket.

It is not made purely of lead.

It doesn't kill, it merely wounds.

Hence, the pistol used
was not intended to kill the pope,

but rather only to wound him.

At the time,

when we decided
that the three-shot theory was plausible,

my collaborators and I started
looking for the third bullet.

And do you know where we found
the third bullet?

In the crown of the Fátima Virgin.

[in English] This weekend,
Pope Francis travels to Fátima, Portugal

to celebrate the 100th anniversary
of a mysterious apparition

that appeared to three children.

The apparition told the children in 1917
about the two world wars,

the fall of communist Russia,
and a third secret,

which was more recently revealed to be

the assassination attempt
on Pope John Paul II.

[dark, dramatic music plays]

[in Italian] I believe Ali Ağca
is an extraordinarily smart person.

He is by no means a fool.

I believe that Ali Ağca
started changing his storyline

and giving many different versions
to save his life.

And from that moment on,
he started changing versions

and giving delusional visions
of what happened,

connecting everything
to the third secret of Fátima

and proclaiming himself
to be Jesus Christ on Earth.

I will resuscitate men who have been
scientifically declared dead,

as long as the Vatican tells the truth

that I am the only Jesus Christ.

I will resuscitate the men scientifically,

before Ronald Reagan.

[Ragona] That bullet,
which hit John Paul II

and wounded him in the abdomen

and which was found
inside the popemobile, the Campagnola,

the pope himself
decided to set it in the crown

of the statue of Our Lady of Fátima,
because he has always maintained

that he had been miraculously saved
by Our Lady of Fátima.

That is why a ballistic analysis
of that bullet was never authorized,

although we could have learned
the truth from it.

[in French]
If we had recovered this bullet,

we could have analyzed it,

proven that it had not been shot
by Ali Ağca's Browning.

We already knew
that this Browning had fired two shots.

[in Italian]
If only I could have had it analyzed.

[in French] But for John Paul II,

it is a symbolic way
to say to those who organized this attack,

"I know, I forgive you,
and I seal the deal forever."

"We don't talk about it anymore."

[in Italian]
There is absolutely no third bullet.

It does not exist.

You need to see the images

that are in the hands
of the Scientific Police of Rome.

[dramatic electronic music plays]

I believe Ali Ağca doesn't really know
who ordered the murder,

the attempted murder of John Paul II.

I believe he received orders,

received some money
to do his job as a professional killer.

The attack on John Paul II
is certainly a story

which inspired the most writers
and the most articles to be written,

the most versions.

[Ragona in Italian]
Perhaps we will know in 50 years,

perhaps in 100 years.
It will be discovered that, in reality,

that a cardinal or another prelate
was a terrible secret service man

who had the task of eliminating the pope.

[somber, pensive music plays]

[Ağca] This is a truly incredible event.

There is a man who suffers,

and then he comes to visit you.

Because throughout the history
of the world, there is revenge.

Then he came to see me.

And naturally,

I wasn't expecting it.

Then the director of the prison
said that the pope wanted to visit me.

I said that I would be very happy.

So the pope came, incredibly,

like he was coming to see
a friend or a neighbor.

He said, "Good morning, Ali."

Naturally...

I welcomed him as a friend,
more like a brother.

And then...

I asked if he forgave me.

He answered,
"Yes, immediately on Vatican Radio."

Then I asked, "Do you pray for me?"

He answered, "Yes, every day."

This was astonishing.

The pope was actually
praying for me every day?

You feel liberated.

Eh...

Great happiness, great serenity.

For me, it was a historic moment,

an unforgettable moment in my life.

The pope's forgiveness was like a miracle.

[Ragona] In my opinion, it will remain
a mystery, because I don't think

it will ever be possible
to find the smoking gun,

to identify who organized
the attack on the pope.

[man] We haven't been able
to reach a verdict.

We are still incapable
of giving the final word.

In time, I believe
the truth will come to light.

But the historical truth
will take a long time.

[reporter in English] Ağca served 19 years
in an Italian jail for the shooting.

He was released in 2000
and then served another ten years

in Turkey for the murder
of a newspaper editor.

Now, more than 30 years later,

that act of forgiveness
brought him back to the Vatican

to pay his respects
at the pope saint's tomb.

[speaking in Italian]

[translator in English]
I've come because December 27

is the anniversary
of my meeting with the pope in 1983.

I'm happy to be here
in St. Peter's Square,

the place where the miracle took place
and the home of Christianity.

[Ağca in Italian]
I went there to visit him,

and once I was
in front of the pope's tomb, I said,

"Brother Karol Wojtyła,

I have come to honor your memory."

"That is why I'm here."

An energy, let's say,
something superhuman, supernatural,

he said, "You had to do it."

By that, he means that it had to happen.

[gentle music plays, then fades]

[theme music plays]

[music fades]