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Exactly 31 years after St. John Paul II personally forgave him for shooting and trying to assassinate him, Mehmet Ali Agca returned to the Vatican with a bunch of white roses and laid them at the late pope's tomb. Ali Agca, who was released from an Italian prison in 2000 and extradited to Turkey where he was jailed for killing a journalist in 1979, phoned the Italian newspaper La Repubblica to announce his presence in St. Peter's Square Dec. 27. It was on Dec. 27, 1983, after celebrating Mass in the chapel of Rome's Rebibbia prison, that Pope John Paul personally forgave him during a 15-minute meeting in a cell. Ali Agca had been sentenced to life in prison for shooting the pope May 13, 1981, during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, did not issue a statement about Ali Agca's visit to the late pope's tomb nor about the Turk's repeated requests to meet Pope Francis. "He put his flowers on John Paul's tomb; I think that's enough," Father Lombardi told La Repubblica. The newspaper reported that Ali Agca traveled by "plane, car and foot" from Turkey to Greece, then to Austria, through northern Italy and to Rome. He apparently was not stopped at any of the borders.

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