Declassified British documents reveal the extent to which
Pope John Paul II tried unsuccessfully to intervene to end a 1981
hunger strike by Catholic prisoners in a British jail in Northern
Ireland. The documents claim that, after the pope sent a special
envoy, the leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army
prisoners, Bobby Sands, was willing to suspend the fast just days
before he died. The offer was conveyed to the British authorities
by the pope's secretary, Irish Msgr. John Magee, whom Pope John
Paul dispatched to persuade the prisoners to call off the hunger
strike.
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