Benjamin Mendoza

Being The Pope is a dangerous job. For nearly two thousand years, leading the Catholic Church meant wielding the power of an Emperor and making just as many enemies. Popes were assassinated as often as Kings and Queens.

Even in modern times wearing The White Robe has meant dodging attacks.

Pope Benedict XVI has received countless death threats and been under constant guard after inadvertently offending Muslims. Before him, John Paul II was shot and nearly killed by a Communist agent.

But the job may actually be more dangerous than anyone knows. For centuries the Church has hidden attacks that almost succeeded.

This is the story of a secret held, for as long as he lived, by Pope Paul VI to protect the man who tried to kill him.

By Ron Laytner
Copyright 2007
Edit International

MANILA, PHILIPPINES- Benjamin Mendoza, the artist, languished on an iron bed in a cavernous cell-block in Manila’s National Penitentiary carefully ignored by almost 1,000 Philipino prisoners.

Everyone, including the guards, wore khaki prison clothing. Many prisoners were singing. Others were gambling. Most wore crucifixes around their necks and many carried Bibles. Almost all were devout Roman Catholics.

But Mendoza sat alone in his private sea of Catholicism. The artist wore a black shirt and bright red pants so he never again could be mistaken for a priest. His punishment was total loneliness. For this was the man who had tried to kill the Pope.

It had taken a long time to get permission to see the Bolivian artist and our interview was his first since his attack on Pope Paul at Manila Airport in November 1970.

Then, Mendoza, disguised as a black-garbed priest, waited until the Pontif was near and then lunged at him wielding a long knife.

The Pope was saved by the quick action of President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines who cut down the hopeful assassin with a single blow. Moments after Mendoza was engulfed by secret service agents and rushed off to jail. The Pope was rushed away to safety.

People throughout the world, Catholics and non- Catholics alike and even the Pope’s many enemies shuddered with relief. It had been close. Unanswered had been the question: What would have happened if the Pope had been assassinated? How would it have affected world history?

It had been the first attack on a reigning Pope in hundreds of years. Headlines blazed around the world. The Republic of the Philippines was embarrassed that Mendoza, a Bolvian foreigner, it kept pointing out, had attacked the Pope on their soil.

Bolivia was ashamed it had spawned Mendoza in the first place. There was a short 'trial' and then Mendoza disappeared from sight.

I was the only journalist to ever interview him, as it turned out.

"Religion is causing most of the trouble in the world today," whispered Mendoza into my ear as if confiding a secret. He had to make himself heard above the hum of milling prisoners deep inside Manila's Bilibid Prison.

Pointing at some of the prisoners wearing Crucifixes round their necks, he declared, "Religion is a drug. It's a narcotic addicting millions of people. If it wasn't for religion the prisoners here would riot and kill the guards."

He told me of his attack on the Pope:
"I planned it for a long time. I had to show the world who this man was, and what he represents. Half a year earlier I prepared a drawing showing the death of the Pope and another on the death of President Nixon.

"I never planned to really kill the Pope. My attack was to be a symbolic assassination but no one believed me. I only dressed as a priest so I could get near Him...I hate anything to do with religion and it was very strange for me to have to wear a priest's clothing and a Crucifix made in Hong Kong. But it was the only way I could get near Him.

"But when I pulled out the knife President Marcos stopped me. I was amazed when he hit me with his hand. It was a karate blow and terribly painful. The President was so strong, so powerful. I couldn't believe the pain.

"The attack on the Pope happened during my dream. They should not have arrested me. It was a big mistake. When they first grabbed me I didn't tell them it was just a dream but after a week everybody knew it was a dream.

"At the court trial they found nothing, nothing. But they were not sorry. They had to have a show for the world. They had to make believe that they are always strict."

Mendoza had lost nearly forty pounds in prison. The fat-faced artist shown struggling with secret service agents in pictures published on the front pages of the world's newspapers has been replaced by a thin-faced, darkly handsome prisoner whose hypnotic eyes burned with passion as he tried to explain his crime.

"I am not evil. I am a good man. In the beginning I did some sketching but I soon lost my heart for working here. It is too depressing. The other prisoners do not like me. Many cross themselves when they look at me.

"But at least I am no longer in danger as I was at the beginning," said Mendoza. "The other prisoners realize now I mean them no harm. I have even tried teaching some art. But they cannot be friends with me.

"Some of the younger boys I taught had real talent. But they were soon re-classified and sent to other areas. I gave them a little advice in a friendly, but not strict way. I couldn't say too much because of my crime. They are all Catholics here and I must be careful.

"In the beginning it was very dangerous for me here because many prisoners wanted to kill me for having attacked the Pope. We had many angry discussions. They were all threatening to me at first but after I talked with them they began to act nice.

Now they just do not have much to do with me. It was really better when they were angry because now it is very lonely for me."

He shrugged his shoulders, "I don't think they all hate me. They are just afraid to befriend me. It is very strange. Sometimes priests come to see the other prisoners. Sometimes the priests come and even talk with me. Some of the priests act like friends with me."

Mendoza proudly told me of his travels from Bolivia, displaying his art and gaining an artistic reputation up through Central America, across the United States and on to Hawaii.

He had traveled to Japan where he'd had three art exhibitions in two years, been turned down for a visa by the Russian Embassy in Tokyo, traveled on to Hong Kong and visited Communist China on a three-day trip to Canton before coming to the Philippines and his date with the Pope.

Mendoza said he would like to leave the prison someday if he could get some country to accept him. Bitterly, he declared his homeland Bolivia had forgotten him.

But why did he try to kill the Pope?
"I wasn't going to really kill him," insisted the artist heatedly. "It was symbolic I tell you. 1 would not have plunged the knife into him. I just wanted to show his evil influence on the world."

Mendoza’s prison history shows a well-planned Philippine government scenario to minimize the attack on a Pope on its soil. It is full of lies and excuses. Even President Marcos, who saved the Pope took part in the cover up.

In his reports the prison guidance sociologist described Mendoza as "...a baptized Roman Catholic who refuses to believe the faith of his parents and claims that it is only to give him a Catholic name. He believes religion is a belief of superstition, imagination and corrupt practices."

Justice Department Files in the Philippines list as "inmate’s version of the case"

Crime: Attempted murder
Victim: Pope Paul
Sentence~ ... indeterminate...Sentence passed April 21, 1971.

'On November 27, 1970 at about 9:30am in Manila Inter¬national Airport the inmate equipped with a bladed weapon and dressed in a Cossack clergy attirement went pretentiously to meet the Pope who was visiting the Philippines at the time.

While he was nearing the Pope the security secret service around the area noticed his intention to kill the visiting dignitary, so he was apprehended and questioned by the National Bureau of Investigation.

He admitted that he was only trying to frighten the people meeting the Pope and showed a rubberized insulated knife that could not hurt anybody. His intention was to disrupt the Beliefs of the people around. But he was charged. Unbonded, he pleaded guilty on the charges and was sentenced by the court of justice.'

Comments
Loose parental guidance and discipline, lack of self control, a strong possible absence of the lack of religious influence in the home led to the commission of the crime.

Recommendations
Subject should be given thorough counseling and guided advice on the tenets of his religion to inspire him to go back to his faith and a more rigid mental orientation to ensure in his mind the benefits of religion in man's life.'

In other words, Benjamin Mendoza, the man who tried to kill the Pope was receiving as part of his punishment or rehabilitation- religious training.
***
Just before I left the prison I asked Mendoza if he thought his attack on the Pope would make him more famous as an artist. He leaned forward and his eyes blazed," They have written my name now in the history books because they are afraid of what I have attempted. I wil never draw again."

Then he reached under his prison cot and pulled out his sketchbook. "I want you to have my drawings as a gift from me for making my story known."
***
Some weeks later, far from the sweat-stained prison quarters of Mendoza, I sat in the opulent suite of a wealthy American psychiatrist in the posh Hong Kong Hyatt Hotel. The doctor was an avid art collector and he barely contained his excitement when he viewed Mendoza's original artwork.

"Why this man is an absolute talent," exclaimed the doctor. "Like Van Gough who cut off an ear and got into the history books - this man will be an artist of history."

The doctor, Frederick R. Evans, of Los Angeles, California said, "This is a new type of art. It is ‘assassination art’. You can see a plan to kill in these drawings. The picture of the Pope shows the Pontiff sitting on the Devil and with a large nail through his head.

"I believe that sooner or later this man would have attacked President Nixon too. The picture of Nixon shows the artist's hatred of the man, with a dead baby in a tiny coffin emerging from the President’s mouth. And through the head, just as in the case of the Pope, is a large spike - Mendoza's symbolic sign for murder and assassination.

The doctor was fascinated by the artist's hatred of his mother and of all women. "Mendoza symbolizes birth as a pig showing how dirty he believes it all to be. He not only hates his mother he wants to kill her for having borne him. He shows his hatred in the picture of his mother's breasts. Out of the breasts emerge a gun and a bullet.

"This man is dangerous but he is a great artistic talent. His work is so well put together; it is not a salad sort of thing that a mad artist would compose. This work has follow-through and complete meaning.

"He thinks sex is sleazy," said the doctor. ”There is much sexual confusion. There is pain and bondage always with strings attached - the umbilical cord.

His interpretation of life is very sad. That life is white and as empty as a rat hole. The breast is locked. They are dry or have ammunition in them. No love what-so ever.

The woman who is his mother he depicts as a prostitute. She has stockings and heels and she is sleazy looking. Out he comes, born dead practically. I have never seen anything like this. There is a tremendous talent here - a very ugly symbolism, and a new art form."

The doctor was indignant that Benjamin Mendoza was receiving religious training in prison.

END

Epilogue: When Pope Paul VI died in 1978 his doctors revealed the Pontif had indeed suffered a serious knife wound at the hands of Benjamin Mendoza. A large chest wound scar was discovered on the Pope's body. There never was a rubber knife as described in the police reports. With his silence the Pope had protected Mendoza from execution in the Philippines.

Benjamin Mendoza served many years in Bilibid Prison and then was deported back to Bolivia where he simply disappeared.

By Ron Laytner
Copyright 2007
Edit International