I shot the Pope...i’m so glad he didn’t die

Terrorist now cares for stray cats and dogs He tells of his beautiful English girl called Edith

and then it jammed.” Agca also disclosed, for the first time, that he had an English girlfriend just five months before he attacked John Paul II in St Peter’s Square, Rome.

He said: “I already knew I was going to shoot the Pope but I didn’t tell my English girlfriend. It wouldn’t have been fair on her.

“You know I had an English girlfriend? I met her in Tunisia in December 1980. Her name was Edith. We met at the Intercontinental Hotel in Hammonasset. I was travelling on a false passport and she would have known me as Farouk.

“I already knew I was going to try and kill the Pope but I didn’t tell her.

“She worked in a large London department store like Harrods. I can’t remember which one.

“She was very, very beautiful and I had a great time with her.

“She was six or seven years older than me. But she certainly didn’t know her boyfriend was already planning to kill the Pope.

“I do sometimes wonder what happened to her.”

Agca is still reluctant to discuss exactly how his sinister mission came about but the facts are well documented. At 5.17pm on Wednesday May 13, 1981, as John Paul passed in the Popemobile through excited pilgrims in St Peter’s Square, Agca fired four shots with a 9mm Browning Hi-power semi-automatic pistol. He fled in the ensuing panic and got rid of the pistol by throwing it under a lorry.

He was then grabbed by a Vatican security chief, a nun and several spectators.

All four bullets hit the Pope, critically injuring him. Two lodged in his colon, one hit his left index finger and the other injured his right arm.

The Daily Mirror’s front page the day after said simply: “The man who shot the POPE.” Our leader column read: “The attempted assassination of John Paul II is the most appalling and dreadful act yet in a world grown sick with violence.”

Agca, who had also been charged with murdering leftwing newspaper editor Abdi Ipekci in Istanbul in 1979, was sentenced to life in jail for shooting John Paul. But the

Pope forgave him and after his recovery, visited him in prison.

Agca told me: “There are some things I cannot talk about. In that 22-minute private meeting with the Pope when he visited me in jail there are some things I have never