TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/81/81.27

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                                                                                June 1, 1981       

WORLD

Not Yet Hale, but Hearty


As the Pope recovers, his assailant remains a mystery


His first normal meal consisted of consomme and a boiled,
mashed pear, and the next day he tackled a bowl of
stracciatella, a hot chicken broth with egg drops. There were
clear signs last week that Pope John Paul II was on his way to
recovery  and, as usual with any job he tackled, doing it
robustly. Doctors at Rome's Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic removed
the 26 stitches they had inserted after a would-be assassin's
bullet ripped through the Pope's abdomen on May 13. The Pontiff
received visitors, made brief voyages to a nearby armchair and
walked in the corridor outside the tenth-floor four-room suite,
where he had been moved from the hospital's intensive care unit.

Typically, John Paul was thinking of others. He ordered
flowers sent to the two American tourists, Rose Hall and Ann
Odre, who had been shot with him in that appalling moment in St.
Peter's Square. When a group of 52 school children gathered
below to serenade him with a folk song and offer prayers for his
speedy recovery, the Pope sent a messenger bustling down with
a fond reply:  "I bless you, and I would like to kiss you all,
one by one."  John Paul even celebrated a birthday; he was an
increasingly hearty, if not yet hale, 61.

Doctors warned that the accelerated pace of the Pope's recovery
did not mean the end of his ordeal. John Paul faces a second
major operation in approximately a month to reconnect his large
intestine, which was surgically isolated to help cut the risk
of infection. But a team of six doctors from five countries
(two from the U.S., one each from France, Poland, Spain and West
Germany) pronounced him to be recovering nicely so far. Early
last week the Pope was moved to say, after sipping tea laced with
sugar, "Per la prima volta, mi sentobene" (For the first time,
I feel well).

Though the Pope was impaired, business at the rigidly
hierarchical Vatican moved on, intruding on the patient as
discreetly as possible. John Paul met six times with Agostino
Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican Secretary of State, and was told
of the defeat of referendum proposal backed by the Pope that
would have restricted abortions. He also received a surprise
visit form Franciszek Cardinal Macharski, the Archbishop of
Cracow and an old personal friend, who brought "the greetings
of the people of Poland."

Meanwhile, about 3 1/2 miles away, Italian police were still
trying to make sense out of the bizarre maunderings of Mehmet
Ali Agca, the gaunt and hollow eyed Turkish gunman who felled
John Paul in what he termed a "protest  against the imperialism
of the Soviet Union and the United States."  The terrorist told
interrogators that he had first wanted to kill the "King of
England" as well as the President of the European Parliament.
He said he changed his mind after discovering that Britain was
ruled by Queen Elizabeth II and the Europarliamentary President
was a woman, Simone Veil. Agca told police that "as a Turk and
a Muslim," he would not kill a woman.

Agca made that point again when he was moved from central
police headquarters in Rome to the city's Rebibbia prison after
eight days of interrogation. Unshaven and blinking in the
sunlight, his gray worsted, double breasted suit hanging loosely
on his lean frame, Agca declared remorse for incidentally
wounding the two female American tourists. Said he:  "I am
well. I am sorry not for the Pope but for the foreign
tourists."

What was known about Agca, especially the path of his travels
from Turkey, remained remarkably fragmentary; the numerous
accounts that appeared n the world's press were often
contradictory. Turkish authorities were at least confident
about one point; despite Agca's initial claims that he was
associated with the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, he was really a right wing fanatic. Agca was a
frequenter of the "idealist youth associations," which are known
to be satellites of the National Action Party (N.A.P.), a
neofascist group with 586 members currently facing trial for
terrorist acts in Turkey. Of those indicated, 220, including
N.A.P. Leader Alpasian Turkes, could receive the death penalty.
There was also no doubt that Agca had been convicted of
murdering a Turkish newspaper editor, that he had escaped during
psychiatric observation with the connivance of more than a dozen
members of the Turkish armed forces,that he was sentenced to
death in absentia and that he had also killed a man who informed
on him.

Agca's trail led from Ankara to his home town of Malatya in
eastern Anatolia and, in February 1980, to the town of Erzurum,
150 miles from the Iranian border. He then disappeared into
Iran. Exactly where he went thereafter is a mystery. West
German officials doubt that Agca visited their country, although
Turkish sources claim Agca and another N.A.P. terrorist were
seen near Stuttgart. Stamps in his forged passport indicate
that Agca spent time in Spain. He is known to have visited
Tunisia. Agca claims to have traveled to Lebanon, Syria, Iran,
Bulgaria, Switzerland, Britain, France, Belgium, West
Germany, and Denmark. But it was to Austria, which Agca did not
mention, that authorities traced the 9 mm Browning pistol used
at St. Peter's. The weapon apparently was stolen from a retired
gunsmith near Vienna.

Could Agca have managed all this without help?  He had handled
the pistol like a trained marksman. A Rome Police spokesman
said his forged passport was absolutely perfect. "He could not
have produced it alone."  (Turkish police say they have arrested
two men and a woman in connection with the passport forgery.)
Was it possible that Agca could have financed his 16 month stay
in Europe, as he claimed,through "the gifts of friends"?
Authorities were by no means sure,but at week's end they still
believed he had probably been acting alone.

As Agca continued to puzzle the Italian police, the Pope was
announcing his forgiveness for the "brother" who had shot him.
The Pontiff was absent from the Vatican window where he
normally delivers a Sunday blessing to pilgrims, but his tape
recorded voice was there instead ringing clear over the huge
square.

John Paul's doctors expect and hope that he will spend at
least a month convalescing in the hospital, and much more time
than that before resuming his duties. He may not be able to
travel again for six months. When he does, or when he appears
at St. Peter's, the Cardinals who know him best feel certain
that the Pope will once again want to plunge into the crowds of
admirers and worshipers. Says Carlo Cardinal Confalonieri, the
dean of the College of Cardinals:  "The good shepherd offers his
life for his sheep. Because of this, the shepherd will not
detach himself from them. It would imply that he is abandoning
his flock." Although he was careful not to talk about the
referendum itself, the Pope had made clear his opposition to
abortion as last week's vote drew nearer. Said he:  "The church
considers every legislation in favor of abortion as a grave
offense against the fundamental rights of man and against the
divine commandment 'Thou shalt not kill.'" Consequently, John
Paul was criticized by liberal and moderate politicians and
newspapers for transgressing the boundary between church and
state.

To the consternation of the church, and to the surprise of many
who had expected a sympathy vote for the wounded Pope, the
voters in 97.5% Roman Catholic Italy turned down the restricting
referendum by a 2 to 1 margin. The result leaves intact Italy's
controversial three year old law that allows women over 18 and
minors with the consent of parents to receive abortions at
state expense during the first 90 days of pregnancy. Currently,
there are about 200,000 such legal operations every year, and
the rate is climbing; there are also an estimated 600,000
illegal abortions annually, mostly because many approved clinics
bow to church opposition and refuse to perform the operations.
Voters also overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to make the 1978
abortion law even more liberal.

Glum at the outcome, church leaders vowed to continue their
right to life fight from the pulpit. Canon law holds that
abortion is a grave sin and that all those involved in it;
doctors, nurses, as well as patients, incur automatic
excommunication. Anastasio Alberto Cardinal Ballestrero,
president of the Italian Bishops Conference, noted that the
church must "never renounce its mission of evangelization and
education of the human conscience."  Said Vittoria Quarenghi,
a Christian Democratic member of parliament and a leader in the
antiabortion drive:  "We have not lost the war, only a battle."

By George Russell. Reported by Wilton Wynn/Rome