At a meeting Tuesday with Armenian Apostolic Patriarch Karekin II in his residence, the Pope talked about his schoolmate whose family had to flee from Armenia.
John Paul II did not reveal his friend´s name. But the friend was likely the first to speak to Karol Wojtyla about the genocide the Armenians suffered in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.
The anecdote signaled the cordiality that has developed between the Holy Father and the new apostolic patriarch, who succeeded Karekin I, a personal friend of the Pope´s.
