VATICAN CITY — The Italian left-wing terrorist group the Red Brigades plotted to kidnap Pope John Paul II, according to a new book released Jan. 26 by the Vatican-appointed advocate for John Paul’s canonization.
The book, “Why He Is a Saint,” also reveals that the pope personally confronted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev about possible Kremlin involvement in the 1981 attempt on the pope’s life.
The book is written by Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the postulator, or official advocate, for John Paul’s sainthood, with Saverio Gaeta, the editor-in-chief of the prominent Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family).
The book says the Italian secret services informed John Paul about the Red Brigades plot early in his papacy and that the pope “wondered about the motivations for the attack.”
Years after Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot and nearly killed John Paul in St. Peter’s Square in May 1981, Oder reported, the pope asked Gorbachev about theories that the Kremlin, acting through Bulgarian intermediaries, had been behind the assassination attempt.
Gorbachev “said that he had found nothing in the archives of the USSR to support such a hypothesis,” Oder wrote.
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