Not Yet Hale, but Hearty

By George Russell

As the Pope recovers, his assailant remains a mystery

His first normal meal consisted of consomme and a boiled, mashed pear, and the next day he tackled a bowl of stracciatella, a hot chicken broth with egg drops. There were clear signs last week that Pope John Paul II was on his way to recovery--and, as usual with any job he tackled, doing it robustly. Doctors at Rome's Agostino Gemelli Polyclinic removed the 26 stitches they had inserted after a would-be assassin's bullet ripped through the Pope's abdomen on May 13. The Pontiff received visitors, made brief voyages to a nearby armchair and walked in the corridor outside the tenth-floor four-room suite, where he had been moved from the hospital's intensive-care unit.

Typically, John Paul was thinking of others. He ordered flowers sent to the two American tourists, Rose Hall and Ann Odre, who had been shot with him in that appalling moment in St. Peter's Square. When a group of 52 schoolchildren gathered below to serenade him with a folk song and offer prayers for his speedy recovery, the Pope sent a messenger bustling down with a fond reply: "I bless you, and I would like to kiss you all, one by one." John Paul even celebrated a birthday; he was an increasingly hearty, if not yet hale, 61.

Doctors warned that the accelerated pace of the Pope's recovery did not mean the end of his ordeal. John Paul faces a second major operation in approximately a month to reconnect his large intestine, which was surgically isolated to help cut the risk of infection. But a team of six doctors from five countries (two from the U.S., one each from France, Poland, Spain and West Germany) pronounced him to be recovering nicely so far. Early last week the Pope was moved to say, after sipping tea laced with sugar, "Per la prima volta, mi sento bene" (For the first time, I feel well).

Though the Pope was impaired, business at the rigidly hierarchical Vatican moved on, intruding on the patient as discreetly as possible. John Paul met six times with Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican Secretary of State, and was told of the defeat of a referendum proposal backed by the Pope that would have restricted abortions. He also received a surprise visit from Franciszek Cardinal Macharski, the Archbishop of Cracow and an old personal friend, who brought "the greetings of the people of Poland."

Meanwhile, about 3 1/2 miles away, Italian police were still trying to make sense out of the bizarre maunderings of Mehmet Ali Agca, the gaunt and hollow-eyed Turkish gunman who felled John Paul in what he termed a "protest against the imperialism of the Soviet Union and the United States." The terrorist told interrogators that he had first wanted to kill the "King of England" as well as the President of the European Parliament. He said he changed his mind after discovering that Britain was ruled by Queen Elizabeth II and the Europarliamentary President was a woman, Simone Veil. Agca told police that "as a Turk and a Muslim," he would not kill a woman.

Agca made that point again when he was moved from central police headquarters in Rome to the city's Rebibbia prison after eight days of interrogation. Unshaven and blinking in the sunlight, his gray worsted, double-breasted suit hanging loosely on his lean frame, Agca declared remorse--for incidentally wounding the two female American tourists. Said he: "I am well. I am sorry not for the Pope but for the foreign tourists."

What was known about Agca--especially the path of his travels from Turkey--remained remarkably fragmentary; the numerous accounts that appeared in the world's press were often contradictory. Turkish authorities were at least confident about one point: despite Agca's initial claims that he was associated with the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he was really a right-wing fanatic. Agca was a frequenter of the "idealist youth associations," which are known to be satellites of the National Action Party (N.A.P.), a neofascist group with 586 members currently facing trial for terrorist acts in Turkey. Of those indicted, 220, including N.A.P. Leader Alpaslan Turkes, could receive the death penalty. There was also no doubt that Agca had been convicted of murdering a Turkish newspaper editor, that he had escaped during psychiatric observation with the connivance of more than a dozen members of the Turkish armed forces, that he was sentenced to death in absentia and that he had also killed a man who informed on him.

Agca's trail led from Ankara to his home town of Malatya in eastern Anatolia and, in February 1980, to the town of Erzurum, 150 miles from the Iranian border. He then disappeared into Iran. Exactly where he went thereafter is a mystery. West German officials doubt that Agca visited their country, although Turkish sources claim Agca and another N.A.P. terrorist were seen near Stuttgart. Stamps in his forged passport indicate that Agca spent time in Spain. He is known to have visited Tunisia. Agca claims to have traveled to Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Britain, France, Belgium, West Germany and Denmark. But it was to Austria, which Agca did not mention, that authorities traced the 9-mm Browning pistol used at St. Peter's. The weapon apparently was stolen from a retired gunsmith near Vienna.

Could Agca have managed all this without help? He had handled the pistol like a trained marksman. A Rome police spokesman said his forged passport was "absolutely perfect. He could not have produced it alone." (Turkish police say they have arrested two men and a woman in connection with the passport forgery.) Was it possible that Agca could have financed his 16-month stay in Europe, as he claimed, through "the gifts of friends"? Authorities were by no means sure but at week's end they still believed he had probably been acting alone.

As Agca continued to puzzle the Italian police, the Pope was announcing his forgiveness for the "brother" who had shot him. The Pontiff was absent from the Vatican window where he normally delivers a Sunday blessing to pilgrims, but his tape-recorded voice was there instead ringing clear over the huge square.

John Paul's doctors expect--and hope--that he will spend at least a month convalescing in the hospital, and much more time than that before resuming his duties. He may not be able to travel again for six months. When he does, or when he appears at St. Peter's, the Cardinals who know him best feel certain that the Pope will once again want to plunge into the crowds of admirers and worshipers. Says Carlo Cardinal Confalonieri, the dean of the College of Cardinals: "The good shepherd offers his life for his sheep. Because of this, the shepherd will not detach himself from them. It would imply that he is abandoning his flock."

Although he was careful not to talk about the referendum itself, the Pope had made clear his opposition to abortion as last week's vote drew nearer. Said he: "The church considers every legislation in favor of abortion as a grave offense against the fundamental rights of man and against the divine commandment 'Thou shalt not kill.' " Consequently, John Paul was criticized by liberal and moderate politicians and newspapers for transgressing the boundary between church and state.

To the consternation of the church, and to the surprise of many who had expected a sympathy vote for the wounded Pope, the voters in 97.5% Roman Catholic Italy turned down the restricting referendum by a 2-to-1 margin. The result leaves intact Italy's controversial three-year-old law that allows women over 18--and minors with the consent of parents --to receive abortions at state expense during the first 90 days of pregnancy. Currently, there are about 200,000 such legal operations every year, and the rate is climbing; there are also an estimated 600,000 illegal abortions annually, mostly because many approved clinics bow to church opposition and refuse to perform the operations. Voters also overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to make the 1978 abortion law even more liberal.

Glum at the outcome, church leaders vowed to continue their right-to-life fight from the pulpit. Canon law holds that abortion is a grave sin and that all those involved in it--doctors, nurses, as well as patients--incur automatic excommunication. Anastasio Alberto Cardinal Ballestrero, president of the Italian Bishops Conference, noted that the church must "never renounce its mission of evangelization and education of the human conscience.'" Said Vittoria Quarenghi, a Christian Democratic member of parliament and a leader in the antiabortion drive: "We have not lost the war, only a battle." --By George Russell. Reported by Wilton Wynn/Rome

With reporting by Witon Wynn

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