Beginning in August 1980, Ağca, under the alias of Vilperi, began criss-crossing the Mediterranean region, changing passports and identities, perhaps to hide his point of origin in Sofia, Bulgaria. He entered Rome on May 10, 1981, coming by train from Milan. According to Ağca’s later testimony, he met with three accomplices in Rome, one a fellow Turk and two Bulgarians, with operation being commanded by Zilo Vassilev, the Bulgarian military attaché in Italy. He said that he was assigned this mission by Turkish mafioso Bekir Çelenk in Bulgaria. According to Ağca, the plan was for him and the back-up gunman Oral Çelik to open fire on the pope in St. Peter’s Square and escape to the Bulgarian embassy under the cover of the panic generated by a small explosion.
On May 13, they sat in the square, writing postcards, waiting for the Pope to arrive. When the Pope passed through an adoring and excited crowd of supporters, Ağca fired four shots at 17:17 with a 9mm Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol, and critically wounded him. He fled the scene as the crowd was in shock and disposed of the pistol by throwing it under a truck, but was grabbed by Vatican security chief Camillo Cibin, a nun, and several spectators who prevented him from firing more shots or escaping, and he was arrested.
All four bullets hit John Paul II; two of them lodged in his lower intestine while the other two hit his left index finger and right arm and also injured two bystanders: Ann Odre, of Buffalo, New York, was struck in the chest, and Rose Hill was slightly wounded in the arm. The Pope was immediately rushed to the hospital while the authorities combed the site for evidence. Çelik panicked and fled without setting off his bomb or opening fire.
Ağca was sentenced in July 1981 to life imprisonment in Italy for the assassination attempt, but was pardoned by president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in June 2000 at the Pope’s request. He was then extradited to Turkey, where he was imprisoned for the 1979 murder of left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi and two bank raids carried out in the 1970s. Despite a plea for early release in November 2004, a Turkish court announced that he would not be eligible for release until 2010. Nonetheless he was released on parole on 12 January 2006. However, on January 20, 2006, the Turkish Supreme Court ruled that his time served in Italy could not be deducted from his Turkish sentence and he was returned to jail. Ağca was released from prison on January 18, 2010, after almost 29 years behind bars.
Following the shooting, Pope John Paul II asked people to “pray for my brother [Ağca] ... whom I have sincerely forgiven.” In 1983, he and Ağca met and spoke privately at the prison where Ağca was being held. Ağca reportedly kissed the Pope’s ring at the conclusion of their visit. The Pope was also in touch with Ağca’s family over the years, meeting his mother in 1987 and his brother a decade later.
Although Ağca was quoted as saying that “to me [the Pope] was the incarnation of all that is capitalism,” and attempted to murder him, Ağca developed a friendship with the pontiff. In early February 2005, during the Pope’s illness, Ağca sent a letter to the Pope wishing him well.
Several theories exist concerning Mehmet Ali Ağca’s assassination attempt. One, strongly advocated since the early 1980s is that the assassination attempt had originated from Moscow and that the KGB had instructed the Bulgarian and East German secret services to carry out the mission. The Bulgarian Secret Service was allegedly instructed by the KGB to assassinate the Pope because of his support of Poland’s Solidarity Movement, seeing it as one of the most significant threats to Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.
Ağca himself has given multiple conflicting statements on the assassination at different times. Attorney Antonio Marini stated: “Ağca has manipulated all of us, telling hundreds of lies, continually changing versions, forcing us to open tens of different investigations.” Originally Ağca claimed to be a member of the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), but they denied any ties to him.