Agca Slated for Early Release

MELBOURNE HERALD SUN, Nov. 9— Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who nearly assassinated Pope John Paul II, is expected to be released from prison shortly, after a liberalizing of Turkish law.

Agca, then 23, shot the Holy Father four times from 15 feet away — in front of 20,000 people — as he crossed St. Peter's Square in an open vehicle May 13, 1981. The Pope spent five hours in surgery and then two weeks in the hospital.

Two years later, John Paul met Agca in prison and forgave him.

Agca, a mercenary for the Gray Wolves, a reactionary Turkish terrorist group, claimed the shooting was planned by Bulgarian intelligence, ostensibly acting at the behest of the Soviet KGB, angered by the Pope's support for the Polish Solidarity movement. Unfortunately for prosecutors, Agca's testimony became increasingly deranged, and the only Bulgarian tried as an accomplice was acquitted.

After serving 19 years in prison in Italy, Agca was pardoned with the Pope's blessing. He was deported to Turkey in 2000, where he was imprisoned for the murder of a journalist and two armed robberies in 1979.

Under amendments to Turkey's criminal code to take effect next year, criminals will serve sentences concurrently, not consecutively, and Agca will likely be released.

Vatican Promotes Palliative Care

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Nov. 9 — The Catholic Church has again unequivocally condemned the practice of euthanasia, while adding that it does not mandate “excessive measures” to keep people alive.

Speaking at a Nov. 9 press conference in Rome, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, affirmed, “We must preserve life from its beginning to its natural end. Life doesn't belong to us. Life belongs to God.” He defined excessive measures as “when you prolong in a painful and useless way suffering which is not responding to treatment.”

The press conference was part of a weeklong Vatican symposium to encourage the provision of painkilling drugs to chronically or terminally ill patients. Another participant, medical researcher Maurizio Evangelista of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, stressed that the widespread belief that the Church disdains palliative care because it prefers people to suffer is a falsehood, pointing out that the use of opiate painkillers was endorsed by Pope Pius XII in 1956.

Vatican Diplomat Praises Ugandan Peace Quest

AFRICA NEWS, Nov. 6 — The apostolic nuncio to Uganda, Archbishop Christopher Pierre, has praised efforts of the Church in Uganda to end that country's civil war.

At a Nov. 4 ceremony in honor of the 26th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's election, Archbishop Pierre made special mention of Archbishop John Baptist Odama of the Archdiocese of Gulu, chairman of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, which has facilitated negotiations between the government and Joseph Kony, leader of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army.

“Where there is war, it is not easy,” Archbishop Pierre said. “I have been in northern Uganda, and with all those guns, I have wondered at the courage of Archbishop Odama and the bishops under him.”