Pope Mourned by Man Who Shot Him

According to his family, Mehmet Ali Agca is grief stricken by the pope’s death. Agca gravely wounded the pope in a 1981 shooting in St. Peter’s Square. Two years later, the pope visited the gunman’s prison cell and forgave him.

Since then, Agca’s brother and mother have been received by the pope during several Vatican visits.

Many hail the pope’s reconciliation with his assailant as an example of the Christian principle of forgiveness.

After serving 19 years in an Italian prison for shooting the pope, Agca was extradited in 2000 to Turkey to serve a sentence for an unrelated crime.