Signs and Wonders
Stephen White of Catholic University reflects on the 40th anniversary of the assassination attempt of Pope St. John Paul II:
“We will probably never know the full story of how the pope’s would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, came to be in the St. Peter’s Square that day. We will probably never know precisely which governments or criminal organizations conspired to eliminate the successor of Peter. The most common account is that Agca was working with Bulgarian intelligence agents. And it’s unthinkable that the Bulgarians would have acted so boldly without approval – to say nothing of direct orders – from Moscow.
Be that as it may, the assassination attempt is one extraordinary episode in the greater historical drama of the late 20th century. But the geopolitical context surrounding the attempt on John Paul II’s life is just one layer of the story. Another layer of the story, more familiar to pious Catholics for obvious reasons, has to do with the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima.”
Read the whole piece.