December 27, 1983: The head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II, visits the Turk Mehmet Ali Agca (a member of the "Grey Wolves") in prison to forgive him for the assassination attempt against him in 1981 at the Vatican headquarters.
Agca, was transferred in 2007 to an Ankara prison from Istanbul where he was extradited from Italy in 2000, accused of a series of crimes he had committed before he attempted to assassinate the Polish Pope on May 13, 1981 in St. Peter's Square in Rome, as a result of which he was seriously injured. The motives of his act and the identity of the people who were possibly behind the assassination attempt remain a mystery to this day.
Pope John Paul, who died of natural causes on April 2, 2005 at the age of 84, had pardoned Agca, and Italy extradited the convict to Turkey in 2000 after he was granted a presidential pardon.
Agca, a militant member of the Turkish far-right, was found guilty in 1979 of the murder of well-known Turkish journalist Abdi Ipekci and of two armed robberies during the 1970s.
