Once Again, with Horror

By Mayo Mohs

A year after the attack on the Pope, another assassin tries

The man came out of the evening shadows, amid pilgrims' candles and prayers, dressed in clerical garb and brandishing a 16-in. bayonet. Just as Pope John Paul II mounted the steps of the Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, carrying his own candle toward an altar outside the shrine, the black-clad figure lunged toward him. An alert Portuguese security guard swiftly wrestled the attacker into custody, but not before the man had come within a scant 3 ft. of John Paul. The Pope, indeed, was jostled as other security men pounced on the assailant, but frowning slightly in concern, the Pontiff continued moving up the stairs to circle the altar. Then, unexpectedly, he descended the steps to the site of the incident and lifted his hand in a gesture of benediction. As John Paul gave his blessing, the would-be assassin could be heard still shouting in Spanish as he was led away: "Down with the Pope! Down with Vatican Two!"

The Pope had come to Fatima, ironically, to fulfill a vow of gratitude to the Virgin Mary for having saved his life just a year earlier, when Turkish Assassin Mehmet Ali Agca shot him in St. Peter's Square. That attempt occurred on the very day, May 13, and almost at the same hour that three shepherd children tending their flocks in Fatima claimed to have seen the first of six apparitions of the Virgin, in 1917. To John Paul, his escape from death and his remarkable recovery from his wounds were nothing less than the result of the Blessed Virgin's intervention. "In all that happened to me that day," he told an audience last December, "I have seen the extraordinary maternal protection that showed itself to be more powerful than the homicidal bullets."

Thus, last Thursday morning, when he marked the anniversary with a special Mass before 500,000 pilgrims gathered on the esplanade in front of the shrine, the Pope had a second escape to be grateful for. His words were somber, as if reflecting the violence of the night before as well as the "menace of evil" he saw spreading through the world. He called on the Madonna for deliverance "from famine and war . . . from sin against the life of man from its very beginning . . . from hatred . . . from every kind of injustice in the life of society." He asked for prayers for his upcoming trip to Britain, which is now in danger of being canceled under the cloud of the Falkland Islands conflict, and pleaded for peace between Argentina and Britain, "two Christian nations with very strong Christian traditions."

The pilgrimage to Portugal, which was also an official state visit, had begun in a festive mood in Lisbon the day before, when the Pope moved through cheering throngs in a vintage Rolls-Royce borrowed from an auto museum for the occasion. By the time the open car reached Lisbon's cathedral, it was inches deep in confetti and flower petals that the crowd had showered on John Paul. Later the Pope met in Belem Palace with Portuguese President Antonio Ramalho Eanes.

The Portuguese doubtless were relieved that the attack on the Pope at Fatima came not from one of their own but from a visiting Spaniard, Juan Fernandez y Krohn, 32. Police investigators soon confirmed that Fernandez was, as he had appeared to be, a priest--but an archconservative one. He was ordained at the seminary of Econe in Switzerland, the traditionalist bastion of French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a diehard opponent of the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), especially its modernization of the 16th century Latin Mass. Even Lefebvre, however, was not conservative enough for Fernandez, who broke with the Econe faction to join a French group called the Sedevacantistes. The group's name derives from its basic tenet: that the See of Peter has been vacant since the 1958 death of Pope Pius XII, whom they consider the last orthodox Pope. Fernandez may face a high penalty for acting on his beliefs: he was formally arraigned in Lisbon on a charge of attempted murder. A conviction could bring him 15 to 20 years in prison.

By Friday John Paul was acting as if the attack had never occurred. Visiting the agricultural community of Vila Vic,osa 90 miles east of Lisbon, in a stronghold of grass-roots Communism where dirt-poor farm laborers seized estates in the wake of the 1974 revolution, the Pontiff issued a rousing call for "fundamental human rights" and better living conditions for rural workers. Afterward, he stepped out into the crowd, pushing through a tight police cordon to shake hands. At one point he beckoned to a cluster of men and women wearing broad-brimmed straw hats and blankets draped over their shoulders. Security broke down completely. John Paul was engulfed in a sea of peasants.

That is as he wants it. Before him lay yet another day in Portugal, including a visit to the strife-ridden city of Oporto. And beyond that there would be other trips and other potentially threatening situations. But John Paul refuses to stay aloof from the people he wants to meet, despite his own awareness of danger. "This is not the first attempt on the life of the Pope," he confided to an old friend from Poland after the Fatima attack. " Nor will it be the last." --By Mayo Mohs. Reported by Martha de la Cal and Wilton Wynn/Fatima

With reporting by Martha de la Cal, Wilton Wynn

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