Pope Absolves Bulgaria
Pope John Paul II told Bulgaria's president on Friday that he never believed allegations that there was a Bulgarian connection to the 1981 attempt on his life, a Vatican spokesman said.
"I never believed in the so-called Bulgarian connection because of my great esteem and respect for the Bulgarian people," the pope told President Georgi Parvanov in an official meeting, according to papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls.
It was the first time John Paul has publicly expressed his view about lingering suspicions that Bulgarian secret agents were behind Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca's shooting of the pope in St. Peter's Square in Rome on May 13, 1981. An Italian court acquitted three Bulgarians of complicity, citing a lack of evidence.
Bulgarian agents had been suspected of working for the Soviet KGB, said at the time to have been alarmed by John Paul's support for the Solidarity trade union in his native Poland.
Many Bulgarians had hoped that John Paul's visit — the first-ever to this former communist country by a pope — would finally dispel the allegations.
"They wanted to be exonerated as a people, a nation, a government, even though it was a communist government in power when it happened," reports CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey. "They wanted that stigma removed from them, and the pope effectively did that."
In his arrival speech Thursday, the pope said he had "never ceased" to love the Bulgarian people.
"We had no interest in killing a pope. It's an absurd notion," said Petar Iliev, a 61-year-old Sofia retiree.
The pope visited Sofia's main Orthodox cathedral Friday, and met with Patriarch Maxim, the leader of Bulgaria's Orthodox Christians and a feisty cleric who until recently had repeatedly snubbed the pontiff by refusing to see him. The meeting was the pope's latest effort to break down traditional barriers between the world's major religions and focus instead on the common values that bind them.
"Christ our Lord founded a single Church, while we today appear to the world divided," the Pope told Patriarch Maxim, head of Bulgaria's Orthodox Church, to which 80 percent of the population of eight million belong.
What he really wants is to go to Moscow to see the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, reports Pizzey. He has consistently been refused the opportunity to do that, so he's sort of picking his way at the edges on this trip, which included a visit to Azerbaijan. The more inroads he makes with the Orthodox Church, the more friendly he gets, the better the relations are, the better his chances of going to Moscow.
Thousands of cheering people lined the pope's motorcade route Thursday, even though only 80,000 of Bulgaria's 8 million people are Catholics and many have viewed the visit with a studied nonchalance. A recent survey suggested that fewer than one in three Bulgarians has a real understanding of who the pope is.
"I am absolutely indifferent," declared Mariyka Andonova, 52, a Sofia physician. "On one hand, it puts Bulgaria on the map. But on the other, an enormous amount of money is being spent on security for the pope — money that could be used to help aging retirees. I don't appreciate that."
The 82-year-old pope's four-day visit is a major test of his stamina. His current trip began in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, where the pontiff's breathing was audibly labored and he was unable to finish his sermons, instead passing the texts to an aide.
John Paul's speech is often slurred and his hands tremble — symptoms of Parkinson's disease — and he walks with difficulty because of knee and hip ailments. For the first time, a motorized platform was used for him to get on and off the papal aircraft so he wouldn't have to climb steps.
The Pope looked reasonably alert as he met Maxim, toured the gold-domed St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Bulgaria's biggest church, and laid a wreath to Saints Cyril and Methodius.
But crowds were small. Stern warnings about security have disheartened ordinary Bulgarians who have preferred to leave Sofia for the weekend rather than greet the Pope.
Organizers will be hoping for a bigger turnout on Sunday, the last day of the five-day two-nation tour, when the Pope travels to the heartland of the Catholic community around the central city of Plovdiv.
Mass for Bulgaria's 80,000 Roman Catholic minority will be the grand finale of his 96th official foreign trip.