The Turkish would-be assassin of Pope John Paul II has said he would like to become a Catholic priest, the website Crux reports.
Mehmet Alì Ağca, who shot and injured the Pope in 1981, says he is "wasting my time " in Turkey after being released by a pontifical pardon in the jubilee year of 2000. He had served 19 years in an Italian prison and a decade in a Turkish jail.
Alì Ağca told the Italian TV network Canale 5: "Here in Turkey, I live as a pensioner wasting my time. That's why I want to make an appeal to Pope Francis: Welcome me in the Vatican, and I will become a priest."
John Paul II visited Alì Ağca in 1983, two years after the assassination attempt in St Peter's Square. Alì Ağca said he has since been studying scripture. "After John Paul II visited me in prison, I thought about it, and I studied the Gospel at length," Alì Ağca said. "I know the sacred books better than many others. If the pope welcomes me, I'll be a priest and I will celebrate Mass, if he wants me!"
Alì Ağca, a former member of the Turkish nationalist group the 'Grey Wolves', has made a series of bizarre statements – including about his motives – over the years.
In 2005, as John Paul II struggled with Parkinson's disease, Alì Ağca wrote the then Pope a letter to tell him the world would soon end.
In 2010, he released a statement that appeared to suggest he regards himself as Jesus. "I will meet you in the next three days. In the name of God Almighty, I proclaim the end of the world in this century," it said. "All the world will be destroyed, every human being will die. I am not God, I am not son of God, I am Christ eternal."
