Rome - Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk who shot Pope John Paul in 1981, has asked for a private meeting with the Pope to "free my conscience" before a possible extradition to his homeland. Agca, who is serving a life sentence for shooting the Pope in St Peter's Square in one of the most mysterious crimes of the 20th century, made his request in a handwritten letter to a journalist of the Rome newspaper, Il Tempo.