Pope Leo XIV to call for Christian unity at historic Turkish town
Pope Leo XIV marks a high point of his first foreign trip to Turkey with a pilgrimage to the site where early Christian church leaders met 1,700 years ago under the auspices of the Roman Emperor Constantine to host the Council of Nicaea.
Leo will pray with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, at the site of the 325 AD gathering, now the town of Iznik, and sign a joint declaration in a show of Christian unity.
The unprecedented gathering of at least 250 bishops from around the Roman Empire during the first council established the first version of the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith that millions of Christians still recite each Sunday. Eastern and Western churches were united until the Great Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope.
The American pope has emphasized a message of peace and a plea to help end wars in Ukraine and Gaza during his Nov. 27 to Dec. 2 trip to Turkey and Lebanon. On Thursday he met in the capital Ankara with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and encouraged Turkey to be a source of stability and dialogue in a world riven by conflict.
Muslim relations
Leo then traveled to Istanbul to carry not only his message of unity among Christians at Iznik, located southeast of the city, but also to reinforce the church’s relations with Muslims.
Leo also is due to visit the Blue Mosque.
Pope Leo XIV started the second day of his tour of Turkey and Lebanon meeting bishops at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, a 19th-century Baroque church in Istanbul.
He was set to visit a nursing home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order founded in France in the 1840s to care for poverty-stricken elder people.
