One Hand Pulled the Trigger, Another Guided the Bullet (II)

Two hundred Poles had brought an image of Our Lady of Czestochowa with them from Poland, and they had set it on the ground in front of the Pope's chair while they prayed for him with all their might. The operation lasted five hours and twenty minutes. The pope's condition was considered very serious. His tension was extremely low. Bishop Dziwisz gave him extreme unction. "But hope gradually returned during the operation. At the beginning, we were all very nervous. Then we realized little by little that no vital organ had been touched, and that the pope could survive". The pope had lost the three quarters of his blood, and a blood transfusion could transmit a virus to him. He remained in reanimation for a long time, but five days after the attack, adopting a Polish proverb, he declared, "One hand pulled the trigger, another guided the bullet." He asked the bishop of Fatima who was in Rome to come to speak to him in the hospital about the Virgin's message and as the bells rang the Angelus the following Sunday, in a message recorded in the pope's hospital room, he entrusted humanity to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. One year later, on May 13, 1982, he went to give thanks to the Virgin in Fatima and one of the bullets was inserted in the crown of the statue of the Virgin. Finally, on March 25, 1984, he consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in union with all the bishops of the world, as requested by the Virgin. Russia was freed without bloodshed from Communism right afterwards. In Fatima on May 13, 2000, at the time of the beatification of the two little Portuguese shepherds from Fatima, Jacinta and Francisco, he revealed the contents of the "third secret" of Fatima, concerning the sufferings of the Church and "the bishop dressed in white", struck by the "blasts of a fire arm" - indicating that he believed the message alludes to the attempt on is life of May 13, 1981. Again, in the presence of the original statue of the Virgin of Fatima on October 8, 2000, at the time of the Bishops' Jubilee, the Pope proclaimed at Saint Peter's Square in the Vatican the "Act of Entrustment" to Mary, during which he entrusted the Third Millennium to the protection of the Mother of Christ.