24-1-2012 No comments .
Jewish friend who influenced Pope John Paul dies
Jerzy Kluger, the Polish Jewish boyhood friend of the late Pope John Paul who had a major influence on the pontiff’s revolutionary relations with Jews, has died, friends said on Monday.
Jerzy Kluger and Pope John Paul at the Yad Vashem in Jerusalem back in 2000 Photo: AFP/GETTY
9:26PM GMT 02 Jan 2012
Kluger, who was 92, died in a Rome hospital on new year’s eve of complications from bronchitis and was buried on Monday in Rome’s Jewish cemetery. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and had been living in a home for the elderly east of the Italian capital.
Kluger and Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II, were classmates in the southern Polish city of Wadowice and were friends throughout school.
"The young Karol Wojtyla learned a lot about Judaism from Kluger," said Italian author Gianfranco Svidercoschi, who was an aide to the late pope and wrote a book about the pontiff’s friendship with Kluger.
"He had a great influence on the pope’s life," Mr Svidercoschi, who wrote about their friendship in the 1993 book "Letter to a Jewish Friend," told Reuters.
"The young Wojtyla visited the Kluger home in Wadowice, helped Jerzy with his studies, particularly Latin, and started a friendship that would influence his relations with Jews for the rest of his life," said Mr Svidercoschi, who was editor of the Vatican newspaper during part of John Paul’s pontificate.
