Saint John Paul Second’s Fatima Connection

Ali Agca was a professional assassin who never missed his target. He had aimed at close range, perfectly. In spite of all his skill and sharpness in triggering, he missed the mark for some mysterious reasons! One of his bullets hit the Pope’s right elbow, and another one deflected off his left index finger before passing through his abdomen, a fraction of an inch from a major artery.
Co-incidentally or providentially, the assassination attempt occurred on May 13th 1981, exactly 64 years after the apparition of Our Lady at Fatima! Believers around the world, like the saintly Pope himself, had a reason to believe that the Pope’s life was saved by the intervention of the Mother of God.
The narrow escape of John Paul Second could be defined as ‘miraculous’. For death had appeared all but certain to the bystanders; 4 bullets fired by Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca tore through the Pope’s flesh staining his white cassock with blood. Later, John Paul Second himself would reveal the reason for his escape: “It was a Mother’s hand that guided the bullet’s path.”
A deeply humane Pontiff, John Paul Second was not going to nurture his grudge for the assassin. Like his Divine Master, who forgave his persecutors on the cross, John Paul offered forgiveness to his ‘virtual’ assassin, while lying on his hospital bed.
John Paul Second dearly loved the Lady of Fatima and thrice visited the Shrine of Fatima in Portugal (in 1982, 1991 and 2000) to thank the Virgin Mary for saving his life.
The great Pope made a pilgrimage to Fatima on 13th, 1982, the day on which the first apparition occurred at Fatima, in thanksgiving to our lady for saving his life from the assassination. This place had now acquired a special new meaning to John Paul’s life. It was based on the Marian apparitions reported in 1917 by three shepherd children at the Cova da Iria, in Fatima Portugal. During the visit, Pope consecrated the world including Russia to the immaculate heart of Mary.
Contextually, there exists one striking connection between Saint John Paul Second and the prophecies of Fatima on the grounds of the fall of Communism. Our Lady had predicted the fall of Communism as early as 1917. When we look back to the history, we can find that the decadence of Communism occurred chiefly during the time of St John Paul Second, who himself emerged from Poland, once a Communist nation.
When the Pope John Paul Second visited Mehmet Ali Agca on December 27, 1983, the man asked him: “Why didn’t you die? I know that the bullet was very powerful and mortal.” The Pope famously responded: “One hand fired the shot. Another (the hand of the Virgin Mary) guided it.”
John Paul’s legacy lives on Fatima, as he paid a visit to the shrine in 1991 to meet Sister Lucy, one of the Fatima visionaries.
John Paul’s visit to Fatima was not only to thank Virgin Mary but to know her deeply who always stood beside him. During the last visit in 2000, the third secret of Fatima was revealed; it was a description of the assassination of attempt on Pope John Paul: the “bishop clothed in white” who prays for all the faithful is the Pope.
As a measure of his gratitude, John Paul gave the bullet that was extracted from his abdomen to the Shrine; the bullet today forms part of the crown of the statue of the Virgin of Fatima!
As John Paul Second makes his way with great effort towards the cross among the corpses of those who were martyred, he too falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire.
The beautiful truth is that, ‘Saint John Paul 2nd held the hand of Mother Mary throughout his life, saying: “Rosary is the storehouse of countless blessings.” The devotion of Saint John Paul Second culminated by introducing to the world ‘Mystery of Light’ to the Rosary history in addition to the traditional mysteries of the rosary. Certainly the mystery of Christ is a mystery of light. ‘He is the Light of the world’.