(Vatican News) Forty years ago, the assassination attempt on John Paul II took place in Saint Peter’s Square. A video with commentary by André Frossard recalls those shocking events, together with the disarming power of mercy and forgiveness.
Forty years on, the images from those events are still troubling today. The Pope, sixty years old and still in full physical health, lifts and holds a little girl with blond curly hair. Her parents had just lifted her up to the Pope for his blessing. Immediately afterwards, gun shots rang out, the Pope collapsed in the arms of his secretary, and the white vehicle carrying him ran off suddenly going into the Vatican. Then, the race to Gemelli Hospital, while prayers rose up from the astonished faithful around the world, and hopes were brought alive after a long and complicated surgery.
The most powerful images of the documentary made four years after the assassination attempt are those where the window of the papal study is seen empty and the Pope’s voice is heard, transmitted via radio to the faithful in Saint Peter’s Square. Pope John Paul II never missed his weekly Sunday appointment, even on that May 17, 1981, when he led his first Regina Coeli after the attack. With a faint voice recorded from his hospital bed, he said: “I pray for the brother who struck me, whom I have sincerely forgiven. United to Christ, Priest and Victim, I offer my sufferings for the Church and for the world.”
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