Karol and Jerzy grew up together in Wadowice, Poland, in the 1920s and 1930s. They played soccer together and spent time together regularly in each other's homes. Theirs could be described as an idyllic friendship. But they were aware of something challenging within their relationship: Karol was a Catholic, and Jerzy was a Jew. The times did not encourage their friendship, and the times got worse, with the rise of Nazism, the onset of World War II, and the plan for a "Final Solution": the projected extermination of the Jewish people. Auschwitz is but a few miles from Wadowice.

The two young friends lost contact with each other after war broke out. Karol entered an underground seminary, while Jerzy and his father were captured by Soviet forces and fought against the Nazis. Jerzy studied engineering, married a Catholic, and settled in Rome.

During the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Jerzy read in the news about an Archbishop Wojtyla who was quite an active council father. He phoned his old friend, not expecting that he would receive a reply, since he supposed that an archbishop would be too busy to return his call. His friend returned the call right away.

At Vatican II, Wojtyla and other Council fathers were considering the mission of the church in the midst of a world which had witnessed two world wars and the Holocaust. The council recognized that the teaching of God's creation of human beings in his image and likeness had not translated into sufficient reverence for God-given human dignity. It was necessary to consider what all human beings had in common. Wojtyla, for one, could reflect on his childhood friendship and feel the urgency of expressing to the church and the world the need for human beings to honor one another in the midst of our differences. People must recognize everything which they hold in common, and must allow the common bonds to be their strength as they explore, respectfully, their differences.

The council taught that Catholic Christians must respect all that is good and true in the belief systems of non-Christians, and that we must particularly have respect for the faith of Israel from which Christianity emerged. When, in 1986, John Paul II became the first pope on record to visit a synagogue, he spoke of the Jewish people as "our elder brothers."

Can a childhood friendship change the world? Certainly this friendship has gained the attention of the world, and has called all of us to consider our own experiences. We must ask ourselves what the bonds established in childhood say to us about how we conduct our complex lives and how we are to find, in our memories of delight in childhood activity, a principle for acting with due reverence toward all the people who give fullness to our days. And in such reverence we can find power to change the world.