I was sitting in the Pope’s jeep at that time. However, I neither saw the gun nor heard the shot. I just remember how suddenly all the pigeons started to fly away, suddenly above the square hundreds of birds appeared; most likely due to the bang. Only then, I looked at the Pope, who was right in front of me. He slipped down. Without thinking, I totally automatically pressed the shutter button – that is how my friend Arturo Mari, a longtime Papal photographer, described to me that moment.
– The Pope began to pray, prayed to the Virgin Mary, I heard him call her name – the Pope’s Secretary, Fr. Stanislaw Dziwisz, was telling me.
A terrified group of people, who were accompanying at that time the Pope, make a terrible mistake – just a few hundred meters away, not far from the other end of via della Conciliazione, there is Santo Spirito hospital, which has an emergency department. Is doctors would be perfectly able to treat profusely bleeding Pope. However, the Pope’s security without reflex prefer to follow century old order which tells them that in the event of injury or illness, it is necessary to take the Holy Father to his own hospital, that is, to the Vatican clinic bearing the name of the doctor and Father Agostin Gemelli. Therefore they take gravely injured Pope driving back through the gate of Arco delle Campane, then through the park behind the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica to the Vatican clinic. There is an ambulance which is on duty day and night.
– I remember that the blue alarm lights were broken – later tells me Father Dziwisz.
The Pope is placed in the ambulance, which then drives through the streets of Rome. It is too long for a seriously injured person. The Pope spends as much as twenty minutes in the ambulance. It’s a mistake that could threaten his life. When the ambulance reaches the Gemelli Clinic, everyone loses their head. Instead of immediately taking the Pope to the operating room and provide blood which the Pope lost so much, nurses take him to the Papal suite on the tenth floor. It is only there, on the top, that one of the nurses, wanting to welcome the Pope, realizes the seriousness of the situation. So she makes sure that Wojtyła is immediately taken down to the operating room. When he finally arrives there, surgeons led by Francesco Crucitti say that the Pope has already lost a lot of blood and his life is in grave danger. Father Stanislaw Dziwisz gives him the last anointing. He realized that John Paul II might not survive.
Andreas Englisch – Healer. Miracles of Saint John Paul II
WAM Publishing House. Jesuit Priests. Krakow 2015
