ISTANBUL, Nov 28 — Pope Leo XIV will meet in Turkiye on Friday with Christian leaders from across the Middle East, and is expected to urge unity among denominations divided for centuries during His Holiness' first overseas trip as leader of the global Catholic Church.
The first American pope will attend a celebration for the 1,700th anniversary of a landmark early Church council, held in modern Turkiye. It produced the Nicene Creed, still used by most of the world's 2.6 billion Christians today.
Friday's ceremony is the central impetus for Leo's four-day visit to mainly Muslim Turkiye, where His Holiness is being closely watched as he makes his first speeches overseas and interacts for the first time with people outside predominantly Catholic Italy.
The Pope, a relative unknown on the world stage before becoming head of the Roman Catholic Church in May, arrived in Turkiye on Thursday. In his first overseas speech, His Holiness lamented that the world was witnessing an unprecedented number of bloody conflicts.
At an event with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Leo warned that a third world war was being "fought piecemeal", with humanity's future at risk.
Pope meeting Christian leaders from Egypt, Israel
Travelling abroad has become a significant feature of the modern papacy, with popes drawing international attention as they lead events with crowds sometimes in the millions, deliver foreign policy speeches, and engage in international diplomacy.
Leo will travel on Friday to Iznik, 140 km southeast of Istanbul and once called Nicaea, where early churchmen formulated the Nicene Creed, which lays out what remain the core beliefs of most Christians today.
His Holiness will be joined by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world's 260 million Orthodox Christians, as well as other Christian leaders from countries, including Turkiye, Egypt, Syria, and Israel.
Orthodox and Catholic Christians split in the East-West Schism of 1054, but have, in recent decades, generally sought to build closer ties.
Vatican statistics show that while Turkiye now has about 33,000 Catholics among a population of about 85 million, it was once a flourishing land for Christianity, home to important early saints like the Apostles Philip, Paul, and John.
The pope met with the nation's small Catholic community on Friday morning. Amid shouts of "Viva il papa" (Long live the pope) at Istanbul's Holy Spirit Cathedral, he urged the Catholics not to seek political influence.
His Holiness said they should focus on helping migrants in Turkiye, home to nearly four million foreigners, about 2.4 million of them Syrian, along with migrants from Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq.
Leo has made care for migrants a key priority of his six-month papacy, frequently criticising the anti-immigration policies of United States President Donald Trump.
Crowded itinerary in Turkiye, Lebanon
The Pope, 70 and in good health, has a crowded itinerary during his six-day overseas trip.
In Turkiye, he will also visit Istanbul's Blue Mosque on Saturday, in his first visit as pope to a Muslim place of worship, and will celebrate a Catholic Mass at the city's Volkswagen Arena.
Peace is expected to be a key theme of His Holiness' visit to Lebanon, which starts on Sunday.
Lebanon, which has the largest share of Christians in the Middle East, has been rocked by the spillover of the Gaza conflict, as Israel and the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim militant group Hezbollah went to war, culminating in a devastating Israeli offensive.
Leaders in Lebanon, which hosts one million Syrian and Palestinian refugees and is also struggling to recover after years of economic crisis, are worried Israel will dramatically escalate its strikes in the coming months and hope the papal visit might bring global attention to the country.
