Word: rebibbia
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Ordinarily, the spasm of savagery simply passes and recedes in time, an ugly, vivid memory. But last week, in an extraordinary moment of grace, the violence in St. Peter's Square was transformed. In a bare, white-walled cell in Rome's Rebibbia prison, John Paul tenderly held the hand that had held the gun that was meant to kill him (see cover). For 21 minutes, the Pope sat with his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ah Agca. The two talked softly. Once or twice, Agca laughed. The Pope forgave him for the shooting...
...during the past year, the 1,950th anniversary of Christ's death and hence of the Christian redemption, John Paul has preached the theme of reconciliation. The visit to Agca was his culminating gesture on the theme. The sermon that he preached with his visit to Rebibbia was an elaboration of what he had said in a town near Northern Ireland's border with Eire in 1979: "Violence is evil. Violence is unacceptable as a solution to problems...
...offer the bread of love and charity.' " The visit to Agca did not come as a surprise. It had been rumored for at least two weeks that John Paul intended to see his attacker during a Christmas-season visit to the more than 2,000 inmates of Rebibbia, on the northeastern outskirts of Rome...
Agca made that point again when he was moved from central police headquarters in Rome to the city's Rebibbia prison after eight days of interrogation. Unshaven and blinking in the sunlight, his gray worsted, double-breasted suit hanging loosely on his lean frame, Agca declared remorse-for incidentally wounding the two female American tourists. Said he: "I am well. I am sorry not for the Pope but for the foreign tourists...