John Follain Rome

Agca was arrested within moments of the attack in St Peter's Square in May 1981 and subsequently identified three Bulgarian diplomats as his accomplices. He said he had been paid $1.2m. 

At the Bulgarians' trial, however, Agca declared he was Jesus Christ and predicted the end of the world. His evidence was deemed worthless and the diplomats were acquitted. 

In an interview with The Sunday Times last week, Agca spoke of his "torment". He has made a statement to the judge who led the initial investigation, saying the KGB forced him to destroy his credibility as a witness. The judge said he believes Agca acted with Soviet bloc support. 

According to Agca, a Bulgarian magistrate named Jordan Ormankov visited him in Rebbibia prison in Rome in December 1983, before the trial of the alleged accomplices. 

Ormankov, an observer at the trial, brought with him a KGB agent posing as an interpreter, Agca said. The agent gave his name as Markov Petkov. 

"The KGB wants to help you," Petkov purportedly said. "But you must destroy all you have said until now. Otherwise we will destroy you and your entire family." 

Agca has described the threat in a letter to Ferdinando Imposimato, the judge who led the original inquiry. "He was shocked that the KGB had managed to gain access to him in his prison cell," Imposimato said. "He was terrified." 

Although his courtroom antics prompted the collapse of the Bulgarians' trial, Agca still maintains that Sofia's secret service, subservient to its counterpart in Moscow, ordered and financed the plot. 

Imposimato, who worked on the case until 1985, said: "Agca had eight false passports. He had no job but he spent $4,000 a month. He travelled behind the iron curtain without any problems. It's obvious he had Soviet bloc support." 

The judge has concluded that Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB and later Soviet leader, wanted the Pope dead because of his opposition to communist rule. John Paul visited his native Poland in June 1979, the year after his election, and made no secret of his support for Solidarity, the independent trade union movement. 

Victor Ivanovich Sheymov, a KGB major who later defected to the West, said he had seen a telegram signed by Andropov which said: "Obtain all information possible about how to get close to the Pope." Sheymov explained: "Everyone knew what it meant. It meant they wanted to assassinate the Pope." 

When Agca, now 41, walked into the visiting room of his redbrick jail outside the Adriatic port city of Ancona last week, there was nothing in his appearance to indicate that he had been the focus of momentous events. 

Grey-haired and dressed in jeans and a sweater that hung loosely on his gaunt frame, he is considered a model prisoner in his 12 square metre cell behind four locked doors. He admitted to feeling guilty when he watched the ailing Pope launch holy year celebrations on television at Christmas, but said he should be released to return to his native Turkey. 

"The holy father has always said that he has forgiven me. He has embraced my mother four times," Agca said in fluent Italian. 

"All I ask is that he intervenes on my behalf to obtain a pardon from the Italian state. The holy year is about forgiveness of sins, about reconciliation, and I have suffered for so long even though I have killed nobody." 

Twenty years have passed since Agca last set foot in Turkey. He was born to a poor mining family in Malatya, in the remote hills of Anatolia, and grew up in a mud-brick slum where children played hopscotch between heaps of rubbish. 

His father died when he was eight. His family could not afford to eat meat more than once a fortnight and at the age of 10 he was selling water at a railway station. 

Although he said he was too tired and lazy to study, he obtained good marks at school. Already he could see the road that would lead him to Rome. 

"I was 15 when I first started to understand what the future had in store for me. I fell in love with a girl and she was very much in love with me. We never slept together. 

"I had a terrible intuition that I was predestined to carry out some task somewhere. It meant I could not get married and start a family." 

He won scholarships to university and then to a teacher training college, but was drawn into vicious fighting between left and right-wing factions in Turkey. 

Agca sided with a neo-Fascist xenophobic movement called the Grey Wolves, who would howl like wolves at their meetings. In 1979 he was arrested for the murder of a newspaper editor, Abdi Ipekci. Agca escaped from jail wearing an army uniform, but was convicted in his absence. 

He said he did not kill the editor and fidgeted furiously during our interview as he protested his innocence. He had written to Milliyet, Ipekci's newspaper, saying he had broken out of jail to kill the Pope who was due to visit Turkey four days later. 

"But I was just bluffing," he said. "I wanted to be the centre of attention. I had nothing against the Pope and I didn't plot to kill him when he visited Turkey." 

It was on May 13, 1981 that Agca struck as 40,000 pilgrims packed St Peter's Square to glimpse John Paul II as his "popemobile" weaved its way through the crowd. Concealed in Agca's pocket was a 9mm Browning automatic pistol. 

"I watched the Pope go round the obelisk in the centre of the square," Agca said. "He had his back to me. I let him go because there was no way I was going to shoot a man in the back. I said to myself: 'My friend, give up. Don't do this'."  Agca turned away and started walking, thinking he would throw the gun into the River Tiber and catch a night train to Zurich. He had covered barely 20 yards when he heard the crowd start to clap and cheer again. The Pope was circling the obelisk for a second time. 

This was the opportunity, Agca thought. He retraced his steps. 

"A woman held out a small blonde girl to the Pope and he took her in his arms for a brief moment. He kissed her and then gave her back to her mother. I waited. I took aim. I pulled the trigger. I fired only two shots. I remember thinking: 'I have no choice. I must do this'." 

The Pope slumped onto the back seat of his vehicle, a red stain spreading across his abdomen. One of the bullets had entered near the navel, missing an artery by one-tenth of an inch. Even so, the Pope lost 60% of his blood to internal haemorrhaging. 

His eyes shining, Agca spread the hand that had clenched the gun down on the table. He uttered his next words with the fire of a preacher at the pulpit. "I am not Satan. I was used by Satan," he said. 

Although a Muslim, Agca believes it was no coincidence that the shooting happened on the anniversary of the day in 1917 when the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared before three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal. 

Agca shares with the Pope a devotion to the Madonna of Fatima. The Pope has said that his first thoughts on regaining consciousness after surgery were of the sanctuary there. He had one of Agca's bullets set in the vestments of the statue at the shrine. 

In 1983 the Pope visited Agca, who kissed his hand and asked forgiveness. He said the Pope told him: "Brother, I have forgiven you. I forgave you moments after it happened. I forgave you in all sincerity." 

Does Agca regret shooting him? "I would not do it again. I feel no hatred for the Pope, I feel only torment for what happened," he said. 

"Few things move me now, but the sight of the Pope does. When I see the suffering on his face, I do feel guilty. Sometimes I have to change television channels." 

For some former investigators and Vatican officials, however, Agca's history of obstructing inquiries into the alleged Bulgarian connection shows that he has not repented. 

"If Agca is released and leaves Italy, it would be curtains for any attempt to solve the mystery," said one Italian investigator. 

Even if the Pope does intervene and secure his release in Italy, Agca will not be free. His lawyers believe he would have to serve a prison sentence in Turkey for the editor's murder. 

Yet Agca is optimistic about the future. He said his first act as a free man would be to seek the Pope's blessing. From the Vatican he would go to Fatima, kneel before the statue of the Virgin and pray again for forgiveness. 

Should he reach out to the vestments that adorn the Virgin's statue, he could touch one of the bullets that came so close to ending the Pope's life.