On May 13, 1981, an attack was carried out in „St. Peter” Square in the Vatican against Pope John Paul II.
While entering the square, the Pope was shot and seriously wounded by Mehmed Ali Agca from Turkey, who was a member of the nationalist Turkish organization „The Grey Wolves”.
The Pope was shot four times and suffered a large loss of blood, but according to him, the Holy Mother of God saved him, he survived and recovered from the assassination attempt. Agca was immediately detained and later sentenced to life imprisonment by the Italian court. At the request of the Pope, Agca was pardoned by Italian President Carlo Ciampi in 2000, but was repatriated to a Turkish prison where he served time for the murder of a Turkish journalist for which he was convicted in his homeland, and was subsequently released.
Based on Agca's testimony, three more Turks were charged with complicity in the preparation of the attack and Bulgarian citizens were indicted. The accusation against the Bulgarians (the "Bulgarian trace") is being exploited in the West to launch a broad propaganda campaign against the entire socialist camp. In 1985, in Rome, the leader of the „Grey Wolves”, stated to the media that he had been offered 3 million German marks by German intelligence to accuse Bulgarian and Russian intelligence of the assassination.
At the invitation of the Bulgarian state and the Catholic community in the country, the head of the Roman Catholic Church arrived in Bulgaria. This high-level visit is of great importance for the country, as it definitively refutes the insinuations of a „Bulgarian trace“ in the attack. Pope John Paul personally, during his meeting with President Parvanov, openly stated that he never believed that Bulgaria was involved in the attack.