Pope John Paul II, 1920-2005

Pope John Paul II, moral giant, died today.

This AFP story gets it almost right:

Perhaps his finest hour came when he stood before fellow Poles in 1979 and said "Do not be afraid", prompting millions to rally to the cause of Lech Walesa whose "Solidarnosc" movement was fighting to end communist rule in Poland.

In 1981 the pope was nearly killed in an assassination attempt by rightwing Turkish fanatic Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot him at close range in Saint Peter's Square. He survived after extensive surgery, but his health was badly affected thereafter.

It wasn't a "rightwing" Turk who wanted the Pope dead---it was the KGB, as has been known since shortly after the shooting, when Oleg Gordievsky, KGB historian, defected to the West and revealed in his 1985 book (with Christopher Andrew) "Inside the KGB" that half the agents he spoke with implicated the same KGB branch in the operation.

Just this week, another report surfaced indicating that the East German secret police (Stasi) were also players---according to their own files:

New documents found in the files of the former East German intelligence services confirm the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II was ordered by the Soviet KGB and assigned to Bulgarian and East German agents.

According to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the documents found by the German government indicated that the KGB ordered Bulgarian colleagues to carry out the killing, leaving the East German service known as the Stasi to coordinate the operation and cover up the traces afterwards.

Bulgaria then handed the execution of the plot to Turkish extremists, including Mehmet Ali Agca, who pulled the trigger.

Ali Agca, who is now in jail in Turkey, claimed after his arrest that the operation was under the control of the Bulgarian embassy in Rome. The Bulgarians have always insisted they were innocent and argued that Agca's story was part of an anti-communist plot by the Italian secret service and the CIA.

I will not for the life of me understand why so many journalists have a soft spot in their heart for the murderous KGB and the Soviets who spawned it, but they simply do not seem to have the capacity to comprehend that Pope John Paul II was a bigger threat to the Soviet Union than Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn, Lech Walesa, or Vaclav Havel. They feared this man as they did no other, not least of which because 90 percent of Poles were Catholic.

May God grant you rest and reward, Karol Wojtyla, and may God send us another just like you, for your work here is not done.