The Bulgarian

Old suspicions, new suspect

Almost from the moment Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded 18 months ago by a Turkish escaped prisoner named Mehmet Ali Agca, there have been vague reports that one or another Soviet-bloc intelligence agency might have been involved in the crime. With an arrest sure to fuel such rumors, Italian police last week seized a Bulgarian citizen named Sergei Ivanov Antonov, 34, head of the Rome office for Balkan Airlines. The charge: that Antonov was an active accomplice of Agca's.

Agca is now in prison, serving a life sentence for his role in the shooting. In his continuing investigation of the case, Italian Magistrate Ilario Martella had previously requested the arrest of two other Turks. One of the two has been extradited to Italy from Switzerland, and the other is being held in West Germany. Martella's office had tittle to say about the arrest of Antonov last week, acknowledging merely that it was possible that Agca "had acted in criminal agreement with other persons... through various meetings in Italy and elsewhere."

Shortly after the assassination attempt, Agca told Italian authorities that following his 1979 escape from an Istanbul prison, where he was being held on charges of murdering a prominent Turkish journalist, he had stopped in Bulgaria on his way to Western Europe. While in Bulgaria, he said, he had bought the Belgian-made Browning 9-mm semiautomatic pistol that he used in his attempt on the Pope's life.

Exactly what role Antonov may have played in the conspiracy is not clear. Nor is much known about Antonov himself, beyond the fact that he had worked in Rome for four or five years, and left his family at home in Sofia. His job would have given him easy access to passenger planes at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci Airport, freeing him from some of the limitations of immigration and customs controls. According to some reports, he is suspected of having provided Agca with information, money and a hotel room at the time of the shooting, and may even have driven him to St. Peter's Square, where the attack occurred.

The Bulgarian embassy in Rome protested indignantly against the "unfounded" arrest of Antonov.

Shortly before Antonov was arrested, Pope John Paul moved to help clear up another Vatican-related mystery. After the death last June of Milan Banker Roberto Calvi, there were revelations about curious connections between Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano and the Istituto per le Opere de Religione (I.O.R.), better known as the Vatican bank. In a papal letter, John Paul last week indicated that the Holy See would be ending its dependence on investment and speculation for its funds and would rely instead on "the spontaneous contributions of the faithful and of other men of good will."

John Paul apparently had waited until three prominent banking experts, asked by the Vatican to investigate the affair, had reported their findings. After Calvi's death, Banco Ambrosiano failed because it could not recover $1.16 billion in loans its affiliates had made, on Calvi's orders, to a group of mysterious "shell" corporations. Thus the Banco Ambrosiano Group could not repay more than $1 billion in loans owed to other international banks. The Vatican bank was found to be a major shareholder in Banco Ambrosiano. In addition, the I.O.R.'s president, American-born Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus, 60, had issued "letters of patronage" that appeared to say that the Vatican bank, and not Ambrosiano, stood behind the loans Calvi had made to the dummy companies.

The Vatican panel discovered that the I.O.R. did indeed have control over two of the companies and through them--without its knowledge, the Vatican bank claimed--of eight others. But the banking experts agreed with Marcinkus that his letters did not legally obligate the Vatican to cover Banco Ambrosiano's debts. The lenders and the Italian government, however, argued that the Vatican has at least a moral obligation to pay off the loans, and the Vatican hinted at some sort of compromise in a statement last week.

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