On May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square, Mehmet Ali Agca shot John Paul II. The Pope fell seriously wounded. He underwent emergency surgery at Gemelli Hospital and barely survived.
Two months later, a Rome court sentenced Agca to life imprisonment.
No one imagined what would come next.
On December 27, 1983, John Paul II entered Rebibbia prison in Rome. He walked through the corridors. He reached the cell. The guards stayed outside, in the hallway.
Inside, two men were left alone: the one who had fired the shot and the one who had received it, sitting across from each other.
They spoke for about 21 minutes. No cameras. No microphones. No one else.
John Paul II said it afterward, in public, with those unforgettable words: “I pray for the brother who shot me, whom I have sincerely forgiven”.
Brother. Not enemy. Not criminal. Brother.
Here is what almost no one knows. In 2011, the Vatican’s own spokesman, Joaquín Navarro Valls, said that inside that cell, there was not a single word of forgiveness from Agca. Not one apology. Not one sign of remorse. Only a question about a religious secret that had nothing to do with what he had done.
John Paul II knew it and forgave him anyway. There was no deal. There was no reconciliation between two parties. There was a man who chose to forgive even though the other did not ask him to, even though there was no visible remorse, even though no one was watching.
It is easy to forgive when the other person kneels down and apologizes. That kind of forgiveness almost happens on its own. The difficult forgiveness is this: the kind given without conditions, without any guarantee of anything in return, simply because one decides that carrying resentment weighs more than letting it go.
Agca was ultimately pardoned in the year 2000 and permanently released in 2010. He never apologized in public. John Paul II no longer needed him to.