Traveling popes are a security nightmare. I can’t imagine the elaborate arrangements made for Pope Francis’ current trip to Iraq or his 2015 visit to Manila. Popes actually have a convent of enclosed nuns in Rome entrusted to pray for his safety unceasingly, in 24/7 shifts, each time he leaves the Vatican. Prayer may explain why Manila made history as the papal destination where Paul VI survived a knife in 1970 and John Paul II a bomb in 1995.
In 1994, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his nephew, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, were in Manila cooking up bombs for “Operation Bojinka,” a nonsense word that has been widely reported to mean “big bang” in Serbo-Croatian. In late 1994, their bombs were successfully tested in Greenbelt theater and a Philippine Airlines flight en route to Tokyo. Six days before the Pope’s arrival, on Jan. 6, 1995, a suspicious fire broke out in Room 603 of Doña Josefa apartment overlooking Quirino Avenue, one of the routes of the papal motorcade. Police investigators uncovered not just a plot against John Paul II but the simultaneous bombing of 11 US-bound commercial flights from Asia that would have killed an estimated 4,000 people. US authorities failed to see the warning signs from the intelligence gathered in Manila that could have averted the infamous 9/11 attack.
The attempt on Paul VI occurred on the red carpet in the Manila International Airport while greeting well-wishers. Benjamin Mendoza, a Bolivian painter disguised as a priest, lunged at the pope and slashed him twice on the neck with a knife before he was subdued and carried off by the police. Ferdinand Marcos claimed falsely that he stopped the attacker with a karate chop. Contemporary columns by Alejandro R. Roces championed Mendoza as an artist and in one he supplied an excerpt from Mendoza’s trial:
Q: Do you know His Holiness Pope Paul VI?
Mendoza: Yes, I know.
Q: Have you seen him already?
A: Yes, I saw him at the Manila International Airport.
Q: When?
A: Nov. 27, 1970.
Q: Why were you there at the airport on that date?
A: I was also there to eliminate him.
Q: You are referring to whom?
A: Pope Paul.
Q: Were you able to eliminate Pope Paul VI?
A: Yes, I do, in a surrealist way.
Q: How about in a realistic way?
A: No, because he is still alive.
Q: How were you able to eliminate him in a surrealistic way?
A: With the use of a hand-written black curvaceous knife.
Q: How did you use this handwritten black curvaceous knife in eliminating the Pope in a surrealist way?
A: I thrusted twice at his throat.
Q: Do you know if the Pope was physically harmed when you did that?
A: No, physically no.
Q: But surrealistically?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Why were you not able to harm physically the Pope?
A: Because my purpose is not to harm his body.
Q: How were you able to eliminate him surrealistically?
A: Because I made him deeply scared.
Q: Who was deeply scared?
A: The Pope.
Q: Why do you want to eliminate the Pope surrealistically?
A: Because he is the head of superstitions and hypocrisy.
Q: And what has that to do with you?
A: I was trying to demonstrate the feelings of millions of people.
Q: How about the knife which was marked as “Exhibit A,” why did you buy that?
A: To scare him, to threaten him.
Q: You are referring to His Holiness Pope Paul VI?
A: Yes.
Q: Why can you not scare him by mere placards?
A: I believe nobody cares for placards.
Q: You said that the Pope was scared, what did you feel when you noticed that the Pope was scared?
A: I felt gay because he saw death, and also he realized he is not holy.
Q: And when you thrusted the knife at the throat of the Pope, you know that this knife may kill or harm the Pope physically because of its size and by reason of the blade, is that correct?
A: My answer is, even your arm alone can kill, the butcher has a knife. Everybody has a knife. That knife I control surrealistically.
The above interrogation together with court-appointed psychiatric examination stating that Mendoza suffered from “paranoid reaction” should have been enough to acquit Mendoza due to insanity, but he was tried and convicted to 38 months in Bilibid. Before his release in 1974, Mendoza held painting exhibits that sold out due to his notoriety. After his canonization in 2018, it was revealed that Paul VI was wounded during the assassination attempt in Manila based on two blood-stained undershirts he wore on that fateful day now considered holy relics.
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