Free Republic

Soviet leadership ordered John Paul II hit: Italian commission MOSCOW : Leaders of the former Soviet Union ordered the assassination bid on Pope John Paul II in 1981, the head of an Italian parliamentary commission announced. But the post-Soviet intelligence service of President Vladimir Putin immediately dismissed the allegation as an absurdity. Italian Senator Paolo Guzzanti said the findings of the commission showed "beyond all reasonable doubt" that Moscow's military secret service, the GRU, was responsible for the shooting as the late pope greeted pilgrims in St Peter's Square. The assertion, for years a favourite of conspiracy theorists in Italy,...

EVER since Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish gunman, shot the late Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981 in St Peter’s Square in Rome, investigators have tried to solve one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries: did Agca act alone or was he obeying communist orders? This week an Italian parliamentary commission will officially conclude that Agca was part of a huge conspiracy masterminded by the GRU, the Soviet military secret service, on the orders of the politburo and Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist party. The findings are already being considered by a Rome prosecutor who may...