Jesus came to “proclaim liberty to captives,” we hear in this Sunday’s gospel. The man who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 has been released from prison in Turkey. Mehmet Ali Agca served 19 years in an Italian prison for shooting John Paul and another 10 years in Turkey for the earlier murder of a newspaper editor.

Agca’s motives for attempting to kill the pope remain a mystery, although when he was arrested he said he was acting alone. Over the years he changed his story a number of times and gave often contradictory statements.

There have been long-standing questions about Agca’s mental health, based on his frequent outbursts and statements that he was a new messiah. He offered to sell his story to the media when he was released from prison yesterday. But hopes that he could be relied on to reveal details of an alleged Soviet-era plot behind the St. Peter’s Square assassination attempt receded after he issued a statement calling himself the “Christ eternal.”

In 1983 John Paul announced he had forgiven Agca after visiting him in jail. He was pardoned at the pope’s request in June 2000 and extradited to Turkey.

Source: An article by BBC News and The Times Online (UK)