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Pope Leo XIV wraps up a four-day travel to Turkiye connected Sunday (November 30, 2025) aft a lukewarm invited by its tiny Christian community, earlier heading to Lebanon with a connection of bid for the crisis-mired nation.
On his archetypal overseas travel since being elected person of the world's 1.4 cardinal Catholics, Pope Leo met President Recep Tayyip Erdogan earlier travelling to Iznik for a solemnisation marking 1,700 years since the First Council of Nicaea, 1 of the aboriginal Church's astir important gatherings.
On Saturday (November 29, 2025), the American Pope hosted thousands of worshippers who battled the rainfall to be a nationalist wide successful Istanbul, with galore travelling from crossed Turkiye to articulation the multilingual service, which near galore moved by its beauteous and haunting choral interludes.
On his last morning, Pope Leo was expected to be a supplication work astatine the Armenian cathedral past pb a divine liturgy — the Orthodox equivalent of wide — astatine the Patriarchal Church of St. George earlier a last blessing.
He volition person luncheon with Patriarch Bartholomew I, the person of the world's Orthodox Christians, a time aft they signed a associated declaration successful which they pledged to instrumentality "new and courageous steps connected the way towards unity".
Next halt Lebanon
Despite doctrinal differences that led to the Great Schism of 1054, resulting successful a divided betwixt the Roman Catholic Church successful the West and the Eastern Orthodox Church, the 2 sides support dialog and clasp associated celebrations.
They besides agreed to proceed their efforts to found a communal day for Easter, which is presently celebrated by Catholics and Orthodox Christians connected antithetic days.
The Pope's travel comes arsenic the Orthodox satellite appears much fragmented than ever, with Russia's penetration of Ukraine accelerating the divided betwixt the Moscow and Constantinople patriarchates.
Pope Leo is the 5th pontiff to sojourn Turkiye, aft Pope Paul VI successful 1967, Pope John Paul II successful 1979, Pope Benedict XVI successful 2006 and Pope Francis successful 2014.
He is expected to permission Istanbul 1145 GMT and alert to Beirut for a sojourn lasting until Tuesday (December 2, 2025).
The six-day two-nation travel is the archetypal large planetary trial for the archetypal Pope from the United States, who was elected caput of the Catholic Church successful May and whose understated benignant contrasts with that of his charismatic and impulsive predecessor, Pope Francis.
Although Pope Leo's sojourn drew small attraction successful Turkiye, a Muslim-majority federation of 86 cardinal whose Christian assemblage numbers lone astir 1,00,000, it is eagerly awaited successful Lebanon, a religiously divers state of 5.8 cardinal inhabitants.
Since 2019 Lebanon has been ravaged by crises, including an economical collapse, a devastating larboard blast successful Beirut successful 2020 and the caller warfare with Israel.
