A Pope and a President Read online

  A POPE

  and

  A PRESIDENT

  John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the

  Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century

  PAUL KENGOR

  Wilmington, Delaware

  To the memory of Bill Clark,

  for the greater honor and glory,

  and for the “DP”

  “Every human being [is] unique and unrepeatable.”

  —Pope John Paul II, Christmas Day 1978

  “There is purpose and worth to each and every life.”

  —Ronald Reagan, November 4, 1991

  Contents

  Prologue

  May 13, 1981 Moscow Takes Its Shot

  PART 1: WARNINGS AND BEGINNINGS

  1 May 13, 1917 An Echo

  2 October 26, 1917 The Devils Take Over

  3 May 1920–June 1922 A Birth in Poland and a Rebirth in the Midwest

  PART 2: PERSECUTIONS AND ERRORS

  4 1924–1939 The “Satanic Scourge” of Communism

  5 1939–1945 “Blood, Blood, Blood, and Again Blood”

  6 1945–1952 The Iron Curtain Descends

  7 1956–1963 Crushing Hungary and Smearing Pius XII

  8 November 22, 1963 Communism’s Errors Reach Dallas

  PART 3: WOJTYŁA AND REAGAN RISING

  9 1946–1959 Battling Communists in Poland and Hollywood

  10 The 1960s A Time for Choosing

  11 May 6, 1975 The Dry Martyrdom of Cardinal Mindszenty

  12 Summer of 1976 Two Freedom Fighters in America

  13 1977–1978 “We Win and They Lose”

  14 1978–1979 “Be Not Afraid”

  15 1980–1981 An Era of Renewal

  PART 4: GAME CHANGERS

  16 March 30, 1981 A Bullet for a President

  17 March 29–30, 1981 The Soviet Invasion That Wasn’t

  18 May 13, 1981 A (Soviet) Bullet for a Pope

  19 May–September 1981 Commencement

  20 December 13, 1981 Martial Law

  21 January–June 1982 Face to Face in the Vatican

  22 July–December 1982 Moscow Under Suspicion

  23 1983 Dealing with an “Evil Empire”

  24 March 25, 1984 The Consecration of Russia

  25 May 1984 Together Again

  26 October 19, 1984 The Martyrdom of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko

  27 March 1985 A New Kind of Soviet Leader

  28 May 1985 A President in Portugal

  29 May 1985 “The Russians Did It”

  PART 5: ENDING AN EVIL EMPIRE

  30 November 1985–December 1987 The President and the “Closet Christian”

  31 December 8, 1987 An Immaculate Peace

  32 June–December 1987 Reagan’s Fátima Briefing

  33 May–June 1988 Reagan’s Mission to Moscow

  34 June 1988 Ending the Soviet “War on Religion”

  35 1989–1991 The Collapse of the Evil Empire

  PART 6: REVELATIONS AND GOODBYES

  36 May 13, 2000 The Third Secret of Fátima—Revealed

  37 June 5, 2004 Ronald Reagan’s Silent Goodbye

  38 April 2, 2005 Divine Mercy for John Paul II

  Epilogue

  June 27, 2011 Kindred Spirits, Kindred Souls

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Index

  Prologue

  MAY 13, 1981

  MOSCOW TAKES ITS SHOT

  On May 13, 1981, sixty-year-old Pope John Paul II, two and a half years into an already historic papacy, hopped into his open-air vehicle to ride through Saint Peter’s Square and greet the ecstatic crowd. Thousands from all over the world had gathered for the pontiff’s weekly public audience: American and Italian, Chinese and German, English and African—Turkish and Bulgarian.1

  It was a beautiful Wednesday in Rome. It was also a special day spiritually. May 13 was the Feast Day of Our Lady of Fátima, harkening back to the day in 1917 that began a series of remarkable events connected to the Virgin Mary, to whom this pope had dedicated his life and papacy.

  The fact that this pontiff was Polish had alone made his papacy historic. When Karol Wojtyła was chosen the 264th heir to the chair of Saint Peter in October 1978, the Polish cardinal was the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and the first Slavic pope ever. More powerful still, his native Poland was the heart of the Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe, and the one spot in the Soviet atheistic empire—which the American president would unforgettably call an “Evil Empire”—where the communist war on religion had failed.

  “If you choose the example of what we Poles have in our pockets and in our shops … communism has done very little for us,” said Lech Wałęsa, the hero of Poland’s anti-Soviet Solidarity movement, and one of millions of Poles whose admiration of John Paul II bordered on veneration. “But if you choose the example of what is in our souls, I answer that communism has done very much for us. In fact our souls contain exactly the opposite of what they wanted. They wanted us not to believe in God, and our churches are full.”2 These were powerful words that Wałęsa’s favorite American president, Ronald Reagan, would invoke as an indictment of the Moscow menace.3

  The Poles’ fidelity to the Church rather than to Moscow angered communist authorities; the stunning selection of this Polish pope made them even angrier. In the 1970s, under the détente presidencies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter and the Ostpolitik papacy of Pope Paul VI, the Soviets picked up nearly a dozen satellite states around the world. These were major Cold War victories.

  Then the Vatican conclave chose the Polish pope. The advent of this pontiff threatened the Soviets’ global ambitions, particularly when paired with the new leadership that came to Washington under President Reagan two years later. With characteristic vitriol, one Soviet publication in early 1981 denounced John Paul II as “malicious, lowly, perfidious, and backward” and as a “toady of the American militarists” who was seeking to undermine communism with his “overseas accomplices” and “new boss in the White House.”4

  That was Moscow’s take on this future saint and his emerging partner in the Oval Office. But these leaders were not “accomplices,” and neither was the other’s “boss.” Their relationship would be a partnership of equals.

  Make no mistake: Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan scared the Kremlin. And with good reason. The pope implored his people to choose God’s side over what the Protestant Reagan and the Roman Catholic Church both called “godless communism.” The Soviets dubbed Reagan “The Crusader.”5

  Soviet officials knew that this Polish pontiff was a grave affront to their existence. They wanted him dead. And now, on May 13, 1981, two and a half years into his papacy, they were ready to take their shot.

  CONSPIRATORS

  Carrying out this evil plan was a cabal of plotters primarily from Muslim Turkey and communist Bulgaria. Not since the First World War had Turks and Bulgarians found a way to overcome bitter differences and partner for the cause of murder and mayhem. In World War I, the partnership meant unprecedented death, precipitating the appearance of a Lady in Fátima. Back then, too, the Turks and Bulgarians had the support of the Bolsheviks—all of them violently confronted Czarist-Christian Russia. Now there was common ground again: the Bolsheviks, the Bulgarians, and the Turks all violently confronted the Slavic-Christian man in Rome.

  Mehmet Ali Agca of Turkey had been commissioned to deliver a fatal blow. Later he would name seven accomplices, all working under a plan conceived by the Bulgarian secret service, one of the communist world’s most restrictive intelligence services, and the one most subject to Moscow’s control.6

  At 9 A.M. on May 13, Agca gathered with his collaborators. The driver was a Bulgarian named Zeli
o Vasilev. He gave instructions to Agca and his Turkish friend Oral Çelik, telling them that Sergei Antonov, another Bulgarian conspirator, would help them escape after they finished their bloody assignment. Antonov, according to the plan, would whisk away the assassins to a large delivery truck concealed as a Bulgarian household-goods company, a front for the communist state’s secret service. At 10 A.M., the Bulgarians drove off, leaving the Turks.7

  The Turks would wait a while. At 3 P.M. Antonov reconnected with Agca and Çelik in the Piazza della Repubblica. He was driving a blue sports car. With him was another Bulgarian, Todor Aivazov. They handed the Turks two packages, one with a 9-millimeter handgun and the other with a panic bomb to scatter the crowd after the shooting and facilitate their escape.8

  The four men made their way toward the Vatican, arriving at 4 o’clock. Agca and Çelik took their positions among a crowd of faithful seeking repentance and reconciliation. Reports on the precise plan of action vary, but it seems Agca was supposed to fire all or most of the shots, with Çelik perhaps firing if necessary but at the least setting off the panic bomb.9

  The Polish pontiff came out in his small, white Fiat “Popemobile,” waving to the excited gathering, grabbing hands and giving kisses, lifting children in his arms, smiling joyously.

  As John Paul II’s vehicle moved slowly along, the twenty-three-year-old Agca anxiously clutched his concealed 9-millimeter semiautomatic. It was well after 5 P.M. before the pope finally came within a few yards of Agca. The pope’s vehicle passed the ancient obelisk in the center of Saint Peter’s Square. Two millennia earlier, Peter himself would have passed the same obelisk on his way to his execution at the hands of the enemies of Christ’s Church.10

  As John Paul II edged closer, the Turkish national lifted his pistol. Loud cracks of gunfire filled the air. Four shots were fired, two of which hit the pope, one in the left hand and another in the abdomen.11

  It was roughly quarter past the hour, a time that some have pinpointed as 5:13 P.M.—when the numbers on the clock stood in perfect harmony with the numbers on the calendar on this Feast Day of Our Lady of Fátima.12

  The strong, physically fit pope folded and collapsed, his white figure sinking into the arms of his aides. Cradling his sagging frame were his loyal Polish secretary, Father Stanisław Dziwisz, and his personal assistant, Angelo Gugel.

  “Mary, my mother; Mary, my mother,” said John Paul II, who had lost his earthly mother as a child. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” he prayed, imploring the mother of Christ for her intercession at the heavenly throne of the Lord, the Lord she had watched be murdered by executioners. “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

  “IT WAS YOU!”

  After the gunshots were fired, Oral Çelik fled the scene in panic, failing to ignite his diversionary bomb. He would not be seen again.

  Gunman Mehmet Ali Agca tried to flee as well. Here was a veteran terrorist who, in the words of the Italian judge who later prosecuted him, harbored “a natural vocation for crime” and was an “exceptionally gifted killer used for exceptional assignments and paid accordingly.” But this paid assassin, a menacing and calculating figure, was nabbed—by a nun.

  Sister Letizia, a sturdy and resourceful Franciscan nun from the Italian city of Bergamo, grabbed Agca, and a Vatican security official and bystanders soon joined her in subduing the would-be assassin. “Why did you do it?” the nun asked the shooter. Agca lied: “Not me! Not me!” She responded sternly, “Yes, you! It was you!” as Agca struggled to break her grip.13

  Agca had been apprehended, but he was safer than he realized in the clutch of Sister Letizia. Unbeknownst to Agca, his own life was in as much danger as the pontiff’s: his communist friends were intending to murder him as soon as he got away from Saint Peter’s Square.14 It was part of their plan.

  It was how communists did things. It was how they valued life.

  THE SOVIET CONNECTION, REVEALED

  The fallen pope was rushed into an ambulance that sped through the interior of the Vatican to Porta Sant’Anna, the Port of Saint Anne, a side gate named for the mother of the Virgin Mary. From there, the ambulance headed straight for Gemelli Hospital, the teaching hospital of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. It was one of Rome’s best hospitals, only four miles away, though traffic was almost impassable. Providentially, a Gemelli physician just happened to be nearby and jumped inside the ambulance.

  Back in Saint Peter’s Square, the shocked faithful listened as the loudspeaker delivered a message in Italian, English, French, Chinese, and several other languages: “The Holy Father has been wounded. We will now offer prayers for him.” The assembled did just that, amid tears. The flock sang. A Polish hymn played over the loudspeaker.15

  John Paul II was barely conscious when he got to the hospital. “How could they do it?” he asked a nurse before losing consciousness.16 Who he meant by “they” was not specified. But this Polish pontiff, Public Enemy No. 1 to the communist empire, apparently had a hunch.

  His first word to Dziwisz, who had lost himself in intense prayer to “the hands of God” and to the intercession of “Our Lady,” was a whispered “Thirsty,” reminiscent of the suffering Christ’s words of agony on the cross. Then the pope added: “Just like Bachelet.” This was a reference to Vittorio Bachelet, a Catholic politician murdered by Italian Red Brigade communists the year before.17

  The pope was badly hurt. He underwent five and a half hours of emergency surgery, hemorrhaging much worse than anyone knew at the time. In this and other ways, he was mirroring what had happened to Ronald Reagan just six weeks earlier, when a gunman tried to take the new president’s life. John Paul suffered a severe loss of blood, requiring a transfusion of six pints. Sections of his mangled intestine were removed. He had watched his dearest friends, some of them fellow Polish priests, die from Nazi bullets and Soviet bullets. Was it now his turn, too, for a martyr’s death? And who, ultimately, was responsible for the bullet?

  At that moment, only Agca’s involvement was known. That would remain the case for weeks, even years. In fact, to this day many observers insist that only Agca’s role can be confirmed.

  But at the time and ever since, many suspected that Moscow was behind the assassination attempt. A few years after the shooting, Agca fingered the Bulgarians as his accomplices. Agca’s claim only intensified suspicion that Moscow was involved. As the pope’s friends in the Reagan White House could eagerly attest, Bulgaria’s secret service was a dutiful stooge of the Soviet KGB (political intelligence) and GRU (military intelligence). Bulgaria’s loyal party apparatchiks did practically everything with the supreme comradely confidence of the USSR. It is difficult to conceive that they would attempt a major assassination without Moscow’s go-ahead, if not full participation.

  Early on, Italian investigators began gathering critical information that appeared to trace the crime to the Kremlin. Many eyes looked in the direction of the KGB. Both Bulgaria and Russia adamantly denied any such accusations and condemned the claims of Italian judges.

  A quarter century after the assassination attempt, an Italian commission brought us close to the truth. That commission had access to tens of thousands of pages of documents that Italian investigators had collected, plus some twenty-five thousand highly classified Soviet documents that a KGB archivist had smuggled out of Moscow in 1992. All those documents provide vital evidence not available until years after the shooting.

  Yet there is one last piece of this puzzle that has never been reported.

  This book will affirm what many have suspected: the Soviets ordered the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. The crime is traceable to Moscow—but not, it turns out, to the KGB.

  What has not been known—until this book—is that the CIA director under Ronald Reagan secretly investigated the case and discovered the Soviet role. William J. Casey suspected Moscow to the point that he ordered an extremely sensitive CIA investigation known only to a few highly
trusted individuals, many of whom took to the grave their knowledge of what really happened that May 13. That investigation, conducted by a tight-knit group under Casey’s command, concluded that the GRU had ordered the assassination.

  Four years after the shooting, President Reagan learned what had transpired in the lead-up to May 13, 1981. He was informed by Casey alone, just the two of them in the room. The information was so explosive that the report and its dramatic conclusion have never been released or even acknowledged. To this day, it remains the most secret report of the Cold War.

  Keep in mind the context: Tensions in the Cold War had never run higher. The Soviets had been on the advance in the 1970s, but now President Reagan and his partner in the Vatican were standing up to the threat of Soviet communism. The 1980s intensified fears of World War III between two nuclear-armed superpowers. Now imagine if news broke that the U.S. government had discovered a Soviet-orchestrated assassination attempt on the leader of the world’s largest religion, who was a voice for those suffering under Soviet communism.

  One source with knowledge of the report told me, “I’ve never, ever, in all my years, seen anything as secretive as that document.” Speaking of those privileged few who had seen it, most of whom are now deceased, the source added jokingly, “This was so classified that they nearly shot the secretary who typed it.” Few reports, if any, have been so thoroughly kept from view.

  “That report exists,” I have been assured. “If someone can find it, you’ve got the most explosive report of the twentieth century.”

  I have searched tirelessly for the report, examining numerous archives and pursuing many other avenues. I have not found the document, but I know its conclusion, based on eyewitness accounts that high-level sources gave me. I hope this book compels action that leads to the release of the report.

  THE BOND

  Over the past quarter century, historians have increasingly given President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II due credit for their roles in ending the Cold War. But despite the fine work of previous chroniclers,18 few appreciate the depth or significance of the bond between the president and the pope. That bond drove the two men to confront and ultimately defeat what they knew to be the great evil of the twentieth century: Soviet communism.