ROME (AP) — A former East German spy chief said Tuesday his agency had planted a mole — a Benedictine monk — in the Vatican.
But ex-Stasi chief Markus Wolf and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev both denied that Soviet-bloc countries had any involvement in the 1981 shooting of Pope John Paul II.
They spoke on a television special broadcast by Italy’s state-run RAI-TV to mark Friday’s 20th anniversary of John Paul’s papacy.
Wolf said the mole supplied information on Vatican foreign policy and was particularly interested in the work of the late Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli.
He said the monk, a German, worked in the Vatican’s science offices.
John Paul was wounded by a Turkish gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, who initially told investigators he was backed by the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB. The agencies were presumably worried that the Polish pope would stir a revolt against communism across eastern Europe.
But Italian courts found there was insufficient evidence to support the accusations. Agca, serving a life term in an Italian prison, later changed his story, saying he acted alone.