BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

I hope this is the last we have to do with Agca at all...

The new truths - or better said,
the new lies - from Ali Agca
Note by Fr. Federico Lombardi
Translated from the Italian service of

February 1, 2012

Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican news director, has responded with a lengthy statement dismissing, among other things, Ali Agca's claim in his autobiography that he was personally ordered by Iran's late Ayatollah Khomeini ('Supreme Leader' of Iran, 1970-1989) to kill John Paul II.

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The publishing house Chiarelettere placed on sale yesterday in Italian bookstores a new book which it probably hopes will be another best-seller. [Chiarelettere published Gianluigi Nuzzi's Vatileaks book, Sua Santita.] This time, it is an autobiography - not the first one! - of Mehmet Ali Agca, recounted for the public with unquestionable expertness with the help of a ghost writer who has remained anonymous.

Let us cut to the whys and wherefores. The central revelation would be - finally, after 32 years! - that the true mastermind for the attempted assassination of John Paul II was Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini.

Of course, the killer says he has respected the secret about this order rigorously, and that he has only said the truth to one person. To John Paul II, during their conversation in Rebibbia prison on December 27, 1983. And of course, this episode represents a crucial part of the book, and their conversation is recounted vividly and with attention to detail (pp 161-168).

After an initial exchange about the third secret of Fatima, the Pope reportedly asked him explicitly: "Who ordered you to kill me?", and in the face of Agca's uneasiness, he reportedly said, :I give you my word of honor that anything you say to me will remain a secret between you and me".

And the disconcerting answer that revealed 'the great secret': "It was Khomeini and the Iranian government that ordered me to do it".

A third part of the prison conversation concerned the Pope's invitation to Agca to convert to Christianity, corroborated [????] with an account Agca makes of an impressive vision he claims to have had [Whose vision? The Pope's or Agca's?], "I was on the Cross as if I was Jesus... etc etc".

Agca claims the Pope faithfully kept his promise of secrecy, but he considers it time for him to reveal it himself because, having achieved full freedom from his Turkish prison sentence in 2001, and having decided to reject the fanaticism of "Islamic Nazi-fascism", to which he had been a slave, he could now "write the truth about my life, the truth on the assassination attempt on Papa Wjtyla, and the great secret that know one else has known" (p. 184).

And should we believe Agca now? I think not. I have been concerned to make the verifications that are my duty to make and that I could carry out with specific persons about what Agca states in his book.

I met with and questioned Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz on some very concrete points. First of all, of course, about that jail conversation. John Paul II's former secretary has a very vivid memory especially of everything that had to do with the assassination attempt. Which is not surprising.

As the Pope's secretary, he was present in the jail cell for that conversation, with the Pope's approval, and even if he was not very close, he could hear the conversation clearly [the jail cell is not very big, after all]. His testimony is therefore essential.

He confirms that the two spoke about the secret of Fatima and the inexplicability of the Pope's survival, but he denies absolutely that they had spoken about who had ordered Agca nor about the Ayatollah Khomeini, nor that the Pope had asked Agca to convert to Christianity. He also denies another claim in the book about a subsequent letter written by John Paul II to Agca reiterating the invitation for him to convert. He says there was never such a letter.

In the book, Agca also claims of 'various letters from then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger" that he describes as "spiritual letters in which he says that with the Pope, he is praying for me and also for my conversion" (p. 176).

Scrupulously, I asked the former Cardinal Ratzinger today whether he had written letters to Agca. His answer was very clear: He had received letters from Agca - no one should be surprised, because Agca has written everyone, including me - but that he never answered him.

Of course, Agca now claims that he tore up all these papal and cardinal letters because "I was still an Islamic combatant and I could not have such letters in my possession"...

We can go on. For example, Agca would have us understand that on many occasions, the Vatican itself had followed 'the Islamist lead' as an explanation for the attempt on the Pope's life. He cites a supposed statement made by Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who in the context of the disappearance of Emmanuela Orlandi in 1983, had reportedly said, "This could have to do with Islamic fundamentalists who have the illusion that they could thus secure Agca's release".

The book says: "The Vatican was making clear it understood [how things were]. That Islamic fundamentalism was behind Orlandi's abduction and therefore, behind the assassination attempt on John Paul II" (page 153).

But Navarro=Valls did not become the Vatican spokesman until December 4, 1984, and he denies pointblank that he had ever spoken about the Orlandi girl's disappearance in this context nor that he had ever considered 'the Islamic lead' about the assassination attempt.

Cardinal Dsiwisz likewise denies that the Vatican had ever considered the so-called Islamic lead as reliable, and in fact, that it was hardly ever brought up. Moreover, it is absolutely incredible that if the Pope had truly been informed and had believed in the information, that not the slightest hint of it would have leaked out.

This fictional life of Ali Agca reiterates many things he had already written in the past, confirms his policy of systematically derailing any inquiries, denies the leads that focused attention on Eastern Europe, but seeks above all to generate an international 'scoop': that Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran, 'Nazi-fascist' Islam, are the true explanations for the intent to kill the Pope on 1981 as a supposed crucial point in Islam's final war against the much-hated Western Christianity.

For my part, I have put together some precise rebuttals [of Agca's statements] on the basis of the most reliable testimony:
- It is not true that Agca spoke to the Pope, during their prison encounter, of the Ayatollah Khomeini and Iran as those who gave him his orders (this is a crucial point in the book!)

- It is not true that the Vatican ever considered an 'Islamic lead' regarding the asassination attempt.

- It is not true that John Paul II asked Agca to convert to Christianity and sent him a letter about this when Agca was still in prison.

- It is not true that Cardinal Ratzinger ever wrote letters to Agca.

- It is not true that Navarro-Valls referred to an Islamic lead for the Orlandi case and the assassination attempt on John Paul II.

In short, everything [in the book] that concerns my responsibility and that I could verify is false.

The earlier hundred versions of the 'facts' that Agca has given so far, to which this last is now added,are just a bit too much' for us to believe anything he says.

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Frankly, I found the above extended and rather colloquial statement by the Vatican spokesman reacting to Agca's latest claims very odd, to say the least. Not that it came so promptly - he obviously prepared to answer claims he considers outrageous and false before the book actually went on sale - because the Vatican has started to learn that in a 24/7 news cycle, it must be prompt with its responses to media reports.

But that Fr. Lombardi went to such lengths to verify his rebuttals of Agca, which he had to seek from primary witnesses, is more astounding because the Vatican never went out of its way to dispute - much less in such a prompt and detailed manner - the various personal slanders in the MSM against Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI all these years. Slanders which have sought not just to pin on him the ultimate blame for the scandal of perverted priests and permissive pastors, but to seek to implicate him directly in covering up for the offenders when he was Archbishop of Munich and later, Prefect of the CDF. In utter contradiction of the fact that almost singlehandedly, Cardinal Ratzinger-Benedict XVI has fought this war against abuse of minors by some priests and dereliction of duty by some bishops

And yet the facts to rebut the slanderous accusations against the present Pope did not have to be researched - it is all in the Vatican's own official documentation and in reports contemporaneous to the events described.

Now that Fr. Lombardi has set this precedent about rebutting Agca's claims in seeming defense and exculpation of Khomeini and Iran, we must hold his feet to the fire, as they like to say, the next time some injurious scuttlebutt is peddled in the media about the Holy Father himself!

BTW, the first great slander against Benedict XVI came early in his Pontificate - the BBC documentary in the autumn of 2005 on child abuse by priests that even blamed him for a 1960 instruction from the CDF. I do not recall that Navarro-Valls (who remained as Vatican spokesman for over a year after John Paul II's death) or anyone in the Vatican ever sought to protest that documentary, not even two years later when an Italian TV outlet bought rights to it and caused considerable media mayhem in Italy. As I recall, the Vatican effort during that Italian resuscitation of a dead dog was limited to fielding some middle-level prelates to a panel discussion staged by the TV channel in an attempt to show ;fairness' after showing the documentary. How much can you say when there are twice as many panel speakers taking the viewpoint of the documentary? Never a formal written protest and point-by-point rebuttal of all the lies told in the documentary.

At least, when the AP and New York Times mounted their totslly unfounded campaign - sort of a self-arrogated journalistic license to kill - against Cardinal Ratzinger regarding the Milwaukee priest who had abused his wards at a school for the deaf, Cardinal William Levada, then CDF Prefect, took it upon himself to present a detailed rebuttal in the US media - a statement that can be found on the Vatican-CDF's site on the Church response to abuse of minors.

And, of course, the response to the Irish Prime Minister's outrageous lies told on the floor of the Irish Parliament only came several weeks later, in an omnibus Vatican response to the Irish government on a variety of untruths having to do with the government inquiries into a number of Irish dioceses on the matter of child abuse and pastoral dereliction of duty.

In the 24/7 news cycle, a delayed response amounts to no response at all, because editors will tend to relegate it to the category of 'old news' and not worth playing up or even reporting.