Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

"One hand fired and another guided the bullet: John Paul II and Fatima"

St. Peter's Square, Vatican City (1981)

El 13 May 1981during the general hearing in the Plaza de San Pedro, Mehmet Ali Ağca shot at San Juan Pablo II. The Pope was seriously injured and was transferred as a matter of urgency for a complex surgery, from which he finally recovered. This is all documented history hecho: the date, place, material perpetrator of the shot, wounds, hospitalization and survival.

What is moving is the coincidence that the Pope himself did not want to ignore: that May 13 was precisely the liturgical feast of Our Lady of Fatima, anniversary of the first apparition of 1917. John Paul II saw in his salvation a maternal response from the Virgin on the very day of her memory, and expressed it with a phrase that has remained forever in the religious press: «una mano disparó y otra mano guió la bala».

It is appropriate to distinguish with love. It's spiritual interpretation of the Pope - not a forensic fact - that the attack had a providential and Marian dimension; he publicly proclaimed it as a conviction of faith. No consta que la bala fuera «milagrosa» en sentido estricto, ni que exista una explicación sobrenatural demostrable del suceso, ni una confirmación definitiva de todos los móviles últimos del agresor. Lo que sí pertenece a la historia devocional ampliamente difundida y verificable es que one of the bullets of the attack was set in the crown of the image venerated in the sanctuary of Fatima, en Portugal, como exvoto: el signo visible de una vida «devuelta» a Dios y a María.

The connection with the Rosary is very strong, because Fatima is inextricably linked to the call to penance, conversion, and the praying of the Rosary for world peace. In the spirituality of John Paul II, the bullet in the wreath symbolizes that his suffering was "entrusted" to Mary, and the Rosary is precisely the Marian prayer that expresses this trusting entrustment.