ABSTRACT
Once Pope John Paul II passed away on 2 April 2005, the international mass media brought again in the public eye the 1981 failed attempt on the pope’s life, as part of a concerted effort to reevaluate his life, work, and legacy. Thus, almost 25 years after the unsuccessful attempt on the pope’s life, historians, journalists, and investigators turned their attention to Bulgaria and its communist secret intelligence services as they tried once again to identify the organization that masterminded the plot, to reconstruct the political context leading to the event, and to discern the reasons behind that terrorist act. Whereas in 1981 Bulgaria was part of the communist block, and its secret police explained accusations linking it to the attempt on the pope’s life as nothing more than a CIA plot meant to discredit the communist camp, in 2005 the country was a NATO member and a European Union candidate. Whereas in 1981 the involvement of the Bulgarian secret services was seen as probable even in the absence of hard evidence, by 2005 most observers believed that the Bulgarian secret services had no part in the affair but expected authorities to fully support the renewed investigation and make public all relevant secret archive materials.
