As the Pope's open jeep circled St. Peter's Square before a general audience, Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Ağca fired a 9mm Browning pistol, hitting John Paul II in the abdomen, hand, and arm. Emergency surgery saved his life. The Pope later visited Ağca in prison and forgave him personally, an act that became one of the defining images of his papacy.
The Pope was riding standing in his open-topped white Fiat, waving to a crowd of some 20,000 pilgrims, when Ağca stepped forward from the crowd and fired at close range. Two bullets struck John Paul II in the lower abdomen, one lodging inches from his aorta; two others wounded bystanders. He was rushed to Gemelli Hospital, where surgeons operated for over five hours and removed nearly six feet of his intestine.
The assassin's motives remain murky and heavily disputed. Ağca, a member of the Turkish far-right group Gray Wolves, was convicted and imprisoned, though theories persist about Bulgarian or Soviet involvement, given the Pope's outspoken support for Poland's Solidarity movement. Investigations never conclusively proved state sponsorship.
In December 1983 John Paul II visited Ağca in his Roman prison cell, clasping his hand and speaking with him privately for twenty minutes. The Pope later described the shooting as a turning point that deepened his faith, and he credited the Virgin Mary, since the attack fell on the anniversary of the first Fatima apparition, with saving his life. He kept the bullet that struck him embedded in the crown of a statue at the Fatima shrine.