The Catholic wife of a Bulgarian assassin foiled his Soviet backed attempt to kill Pope John Paul II on a visit to Poland in 1987 by informing a priest of the plot, it has been claimed. The Daily Mail reports that Soviet spies sent the assassin to Poland to kill the Pope to try and prevent the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
Soviets feared the Catholic Church in Poland had become the focus for the resistance to their dwindling rule and planned to kill Pope John Paul II when he visited his home country in 1987.
Soviet Military Intelligence set up a Bulgarian assassin with secret details of the Pope's itinerary and train tickets to where he was due to speak, but he was betrayed by his Catholic wife.
The woman told her priest Fr Zdzislaw Krol who alerted the police.
Officers later arrested the assassin.
This week Fr Krol said: "A woman told me that she had information of a possible assassination attempt.
"A husband or life partner of this woman, of Bulgarian origin, was in the possession of plans of the Pope's route through Poland's most holy city Czestochowa as well some train tickets. I called the security officials after which the would be assassin was arrested."
Fr Krol is now chancellor of the Warsaw Metropolitan Curia, a leading Polish Catholic body and accompanied the Pope on his groundbreaking tours to Poland in the 1980s.
He also disclosed that during the Pope's second pilgrimage to Poland in 1983, he received information of another assassination attempt, this time to take place at a Mass at Warsaw's 10th Anniversary Stadium.
He said the source was a person at the Austrian embassy who claimed that three fugitives from a German prison linked to the left wing Red Brigade had managed to get into Poland and were planning to kill the Pope.
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(Source: CTHN)