FALL RIVER DIOCESAN NEWSPAPER FOR SOUTHEAST MASSACHUSEnS CAPE COD & THE ISLANDS
t eanco VOL. 26, NO. 49
FALL RIVER, MASS., FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1982
~OCI $6 Per Year
Wareham MaryknoUer
To Thailand
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THIS PHOTO, taken seconds after Pope John Paul II was shot May 13, 1981, in St. Peter's Square, shows a man at extreme left who strongly resembles Bulgarian Sergei Ivanov Antonov (picture below), the airlines representative who has been arrested in connection with the shooting. (NC/UPI Pho:os)
Papal plot evidence grows
By Jerry FUteau NC News Service When Mehmet Ali Agca tried to kill Pope John ,Paul II police immediately theorized that there may have been an international terrorist conspiracy behind him. But only now, a year and a half later, is substantial evidence sur , facing which could link Agca, through the Bulgarian secret po lice, to an alleged plot by top Soviet officials to eliminate the pope. Italian investigators, appar ently acting on new confessions by Agca, have arrested or are seeking four Turks and three Bulgarians on charges of com plicity in the assassination at tempt. It it can be proved that the Bulgarian secret police were the movers behind the conspir acy, Western intelligence an alysts argue, ,this would· place ultimate responsibility right on the doorstep of the Kremlin's top leadership. On May 13, 1981, the young Turkish terrorist fired at least two shots at Pope John Paul in St. Peter's Square. One pierced the pope's abdomen, nearly kill ing him. Agca, then 23, was caught in the act lJnd freely admitted that he did i~. He wa~ quickly identified as a convicte4 killer facing a death sentence in Turkey for assass ination of a prominent liberal editor there two years earlier.
When Agca was sentenced 'to life imprisonment by an Italian court two months after his at tempt on the pope's life, the con spiracy issue was relegated to a secondary place in the trial it self. But the final written ver dict of the jury, issued two months later, called him "only the visible part of a conspiracy whose other members are un fortunately not identified~" . More than a year followed with few signs of official pro gress, although two separate re ports by journalists investiga tors concluded that Agca's at tempt to kill the pope had been directed by Moscow through the Bugarian secret police. Last August Claire Sterling, an expert on international ter~ rorism and author of the widely acclaimed 1981 book, "The Ter ror Network," made that claim in an article in Reader's Digest. In September NBC-TV reported the same conclusion in an hour long documentanr. ANTONOV Both Ms. Sterling and NBC Agca's confessed murder in pewsman Marvin Kalb theor ized that Moscow sought the credentials, but investigators al so quickly gathered evidence of pope's death because it saw its links to Palestinian terrorists of Eastern European power threat the left, suggesting that Agca ened by Pope John Paul's charis could have been for hire to matic influence in his native Po whomever wanted to use him, land, where the independent la regardless of political ideology. bor union, Solidarity, was then a He was also apparenty a devout rapidly growing force in an Moslem, giving rise to the theory movement to liberalize the coun try. that he was motivated by reli But Agca, the key to any con gious fanaticism rather than poli
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tics.
He had escaped from 'prison in November 1979 and just after his escape had written a letter to a Turkish newspaper threaten ing to kill the pope during his visit to Turkey at the end of that month.
Father Alan Borsari, MM, a native of St. Patrick's parish, Wareham, is making Maryknoll history. In January the' young mis sioner will be part of a team that will establish the first Mary knoll mission in Thailand. The team, composed of Father Bar sari, another priest and five lay,persons, will be another Mary knoll first. "It will be the first time lay people and priests have gone to gether into a new country," ex plained Father Borsari. "Usually priests have gone first and other workers have followed." In Udon Thani, a remote rural area in northeast Thailand, he and his cohorts will establish an experimental agricultural pro ject incorporating modern farm ing techniques. At the same time they will conduct health educa tion programs in villages and a large refugee camp near the land already purchased for them. "That's all ·that's there - the land,." said Father Borsari. "We'll be doing everything building and preparing the ground for farming." He said that the bishop of the poor and undeveloped diocese in which
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the Maryknollers will be work ing had requested their assis tance long ago, but only now has it been possible to put together a Thailand team. Already conversant with Tai wanese and Mandarin Chinese, Father Borsari expects to spend about six months in Bangkok, the Thai capital, getting the ba sics of Thai and Laotian, the main languages he will need in his new assignment, where about 98' percent of the population will be Buddhist. Behind him are 11 years in Tai wan, where he served as a sem inarian and returned after his ordination in 1974. There he worked at Friendship House in the capital city of Taipei. It is a Maryknoll activity center for' young migrant workers lonely upon arriving in the huge city from small farms. The center, next to the city's railroad and hus stations, is open 365 days a year and offers young people a mix of recrea tional and ca~echetical programs. From Taipei, Father Borsari moved to Taichung, also one of Taiwan's larger cities, where he directed St. Christopher's Gar Turn 'to Page Eleven
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AT THE ANCHOR OFFICE, Father Borsari looks over the Maryknoll magazine. (Torchia Photo)