Pope Leo XIV arrived in Turkey on Thursday, making the Middle East a central focus of his first foreign trip since becoming the leader of the Catholic Church in May.
There he will mark the 1,700th anniversary of a landmark Church council in the town of Nicaea (modern-day İznik), where the Nicene Creed affirmation of faith was formulated.
Following a three-day itinerary in Turkey, he will continue to Lebanon before returning to the Vatican.
The pontiff is expected to deliver speeches themed around making peace in the Middle East and urging unity among divided churches, Reuters reported.
The 70-year-old will first meet in Ankara with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, along with other political leaders, according to the report.
Leo is slated to depart later in the evening for Istanbul and meet with Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians.
“It’s a very important trip because we do not know much yet about Leo’s geopolitical views, and this is the first big chance for him to make them clear,” Reuters cited Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic who follows the Vatican, as saying.
The pope’s earlier plans to visit Turkey and Lebanon were postponed due to health issues, the report added.
In July, Leo expressed “grave concern” about the war in the Gaza Strip.
“The word genocide is being thrown around more and more,” the pontiff said in an interview published in September with U.S. journalist Elise Ann Allen for the book Pope Leo XIV: Global Citizen, Missionary of the 21st Century.
“Officially, the Holy See does not believe that we can make any declaration at this time about that,” said the pontiff. “There’s a very technical definition about what genocide might be, but more and more people are raising the issue.”
Also in July, the pontiff called for an immediate ceasefire, expressing concern following a strike by the Israel Defense Forces against Hamas terrorists that inadvertently hit Gaza City’s Holy Family Catholic Church, the only Catholic church in the Strip.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog attended Leo’s inauguration at the Vatican in May and has hailed the pope’s calls for the release of Israel’s hostages as a “compassionate signal from the heart of the Catholic world.”
