Turkish officials yesterday expressed grief over the death of Pope John Paul II, while special prayers were held in various churches in Turkey by minority Christian groups.
The pope died Saturday night in his Vatican apartment, ending a long public struggle against debilitating illness. He was 84.
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in their separate messages marking the demise of the famous pontiff, stressed that his passing represented a great loss for the values of peace and tolerance.
The Foreign Ministry also issued a message of condolences to convey the Turkish people's sorrow at the demise of Pope John Paul II.
“We share the sorrow of Catholics worldwide," said the statement.
Brother says pope gunman in mourning behind bars in Turkey
Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot and seriously wounded the pope, was deeply saddened by the pope's illness and is now believed to be mourning in a Turkish prison over the death of the pontiff, his brother said Sunday.
Adnan Agca said that his brother told him Wednesday in Istanbul's Kartal prison that he hoped the pope lived a bit longer.
"I know that he is in mourning. I feel that he is in deep sorrow over the death of the pope, who was like a brother to him," Adnan Agca told The Associated Press by telephone.
"I feel strongly that my brother is in deep grief. We're all very sad," Adnan Agca said. "He was a great man who contributed a lot to world peace."
Agca, who is serving a 17-year prison sentence near Istanbul for earlier crimes in Turkey, has given conflicting reasons for his 1981 assassination attempt against the pope in St. Peter's Square.
The pope forgave Agca, meeting him in his Italian prison cell before he was extradited to Turkey in 2000 after almost 20 years behind bars in Italy for the shooting.
Suspicions that the Turk acted on behalf of the former Soviet bloc, which feared that the Polish-born pope would help trigger anti-communist revolts, linger despite denials by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Turk initially claimed he was acting alone in the attack. Later he said he was trained by Bulgarian and Czech experts and blamed the KGB for the attempted assassination.