Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Renzi is on a two-day visit to the U.S. After meetings with political circles, Italy’s Prime Minister visited Georgetown University of Washington where he had a meeting with students and answered their questions of concern.

According to CNNTurk, writes ermenihaber.am, during that meeting, the Italian Prime Minister answered Turkish student Furkan Pehlivanle’s question about the relations between Turkey and the Vatican. Before asking his question, the Turkish student reminded that Pope Francis had served a Holy Mass in memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide at St. Peter’s Basilica and had used the term “genocide”.

In response to the Turkish student’s question, Renzi said: “The Italian government has a rather clear position on this issue. The country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed its position on the Turkish government’s response to the Pope. The Pope sent a rather clear message about what happened a century ago. Erdogan and my counterpart (Davutoglu) gave negative responses, and Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Paolo Gentiloni criticized the Turkish government for that.”

Besides the above mentioned topic, Italy’s Prime Minister also talked about Turkey’s relations with the EU and NATO and added that even if Turkey is going to chair the upcoming session of the G-20, it must respect public opinion.