John Paul II had no doubt that the Virgin Mary saved his life!

On Wednesday May 13, 1981, as 25,000 people had gathered in St. Peter's Square for the weekly papal audience, two shots rang out. It was 5:17pm and Mehmet Ali Agça had just shot Pope John Paul II from three meters away. The Pope collapsed in the arms of Stanislaw Dziwisz, his secretary. The Popemobile accelerated. Hit in the abdomen, right elbow and left index finger, the Polish pope lost consciousness. He murmured “Mary, my mother!"

At the Gemelli hospital, the doctors were very concerned. Their patient had lost three liters of blood, and his intestine was badly damaged. In the end, however, it turned out that no vital organs had been hit.

While the Pope underwent surgery, Polish pilgrims in St. Peter's Square placed an image of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, so dear to his heart, on the large armchair left empty by the Pope. On its back, an anonymous hand has written: “Our Father, protect the Holy Father from evil.”

The next day, Archbishop Dziwisz mentioned a coincidence to the Holy Father: Ali Agça's attack had occurred on the anniversary of the first apparition of Fatima, on May 13, 1917.

Curiously, this Polish pope, devoted to Mary since childhood, a regular visitor to Czestochowa, Lourdes, Guadalupe, Loreto and so many other Marian shrines, had never really been interested in Fatima and its secrets. But on May 14th, he was overwhelmed by a conviction. That he was still alive was a miracle. And who else but Mary could be the author of it? He asked Archbishop Dziwisz to compile a report on the apparition of Fatima for him, which he read with great interest over the following days.

His former teacher Stefan Swiezawski would later tell journalist Bernard Lecomte (1) about that breakfast at Castel Gandolfo during his convalescence, when John Paul II grabbed his arm, repeating with conviction: “It was on the same day, hour and minutes!”

For the Pope, the sign was clear: the Virgin had saved his life. At the Angelus of Sunday, October 7, he confided this to the pilgrims in St Peter's Square: “How could I forget that the event took place on the day and at the hour when, for over sixty years, the first apparition of the Mother of Christ to the poor young peasants has been commemorated in Fatima, Portugal? For truly, on that day, I felt in everything that happened the extraordinary maternal protection that proved stronger than the projectile of death.”

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(1) John Paul II, Folio, 2003, p. 517.