In Turkey, Pope Leo pushes for unity and peace—within and beyond Christianity – America Magazine

America Magazine
The Jesuit Review
Pope Leo XIV’s first foreign trip as pope is nearing an end in Turkey after meetings with the country’s minority Christian community, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Islamic leaders in this largely Muslim, secular state.
The U.S.-born missionary pope who had visited some 50 countries as head of the Augustinian order for twelve years told me on the flight from Rome that he had “never” visited Turkey or Lebanon before this trip and that he was greatly anticipating it.
He made the trip to promote peace and unity—the priorities of his pontificate—both within the Christian community and between Christians and Muslims. He set out to build bridges between peoples of different religions and cultures, as Pope Francis did, through a “culture of encounter” and the promotion of dialogue and human fraternity in Turkey, a country he referred to as “the holy land” of the early Christian church.
“One can see that the pope comes here humbly and does not present himself as a big chief,” the Rev. Claudio Mongue said at the commemoration of the Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, present-day Iznik. A fluent Turkish speaker and director of the Dominican study center in Istanbul, he was particularly impressed by the pope’s humble, open manner and by his insistence that “unity is diversity reconciled.”
Pope Leo appeared energetic when he met President Erdogan for the first time at the presidential palace on Nov. 27, where he received an official state welcome with a blue carpet, a 21-gun salute and the playing of the Vatican and Turkish national anthems. As he and the president walked past the line of soldiers, he paused to greet them in Turkish with the traditional salute, “Merhaba asker!” (”Greetings, soldiers!”)—a gesture that quickly went viral online.
The pope and the president seemed to get on well, judging by their warm body language and spontaneous exchanges. Their rapport was especially evident during their later meeting with state authorities in the grand Nations Library of the presidential palace, where both leaders spoke about peace, the family and the need to care for creation.
President Erdogan also praised both Pope Francis and Pope Leo for their support of the Palestinian people and expressed his strong support for a two-state solution and for a status for Jerusalem that respects all three monotheistic religions. In his remarks, Leo recalled “the Turkish pope,” John XXIII, who, as Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, served as apostolic delegate in Istanbul from 1935 to 1944.
Significantly, too, Pope Leo visited the Diyanet, Turkey’s state Directorate of Religious Affairs, which oversees Islamic religious life nationwide and whose relationship with the Vatican appeared paused after the 2016 coup attempt against President Erdogan. His meetings with its president on the first day of the trip—and again during his visit to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul—suggest that the relationship is now back on track.
Like his three predecessors, Pope Leo visited the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, commonly known as the Blue Mosque, on the morning of Nov. 29. He removed his shoes before entering and walked inside in his white socks. While Pope Francis paused for silent prayer during his 2014 visit, Pope Leo greeted Muslim leaders and engaged in conversation instead. His visit to the mosque and his friendly encounters with Muslim leaders in Ankara and Istanbul indicate that he intends to continue strengthening Christian–Muslim relations.
Pope Leo’s main reason for visiting Turkey was to participate in the ecumenical prayer meeting at Iznik marking the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. He came at the invitation of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the first among equals in the Orthodox world, and took part in the Nov. 28 commemoration, as reported in America.
The following day, Nov. 29, he met the patriarch again in Istanbul, where the two signed a joint declaration renewing their commitment to peace, international Catholic–Orthodox dialogue, care for creation and the search for a common date for Easter among all Christians.
Before departing for Lebanon, Pope Leo will participate in the Divine Liturgy at the patriarchal Church of St. George in the Phanar—the patriarchate’s headquarters in Istanbul—on Nov. 30, the feast of St. Andrew, the brother of St. Peter.
While in Istanbul, the Augustinian pope met with representatives of Turkey’s small Catholic community when he greeted the bishops, priests, women and men religious, and pastoral workers at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit on the morning of Nov. 28. Speaking passionately in English, he reminded them that though Jesus was born lived, died and rose in the Holy Land, Turkey was “the holy land” of the early Church: the birthplace of St. Paul and other saints and the place where the first eight ecumenical councils were held, beginning with the Council of Nicaea in 325. He described Nicaea as “a milestone in the history of the church and of humanity,” affirming the faith professed by all Christian churches—that Jesus Christ is both God and man, of one substance with the Father.
Pope Leo exhorted the community not to be discouraged by their small numbers, noting that “smallness” has always been part of God’s way of acting in history. He also praised their work in assisting migrants and refugees. The prolonged applause at the end of his remarks suggested that his words resonated deeply with this tiny but courageous community.
On his last full day in Turkey, Saturday, Nov. 29, Pope Leo held a private meeting with the leaders of the different Christian denominations at the Syriac Orthodox Church of Mor Ephrem. At the end of the encounter, he spoke again about the Council of Nicaea and prayed for more ecumenical prayer gatherings in the coming years like the one at Iznik, and for the participation of churches not present this time. He emphasized once more that divisions among Christians remain a major obstacle to evangelization, and he invited Christian leaders to begin a spiritual journey leading up to the year 2033, the 2,000th anniversary of the Redemption. He expressed the hope that the leaders of all Christian churches could come together in Jerusalem during that Jubilee Year to mark the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
On Saturday evening, an energetic and smiling Pope Leo concelebrated a festive Mass at the Volkswagen Arena Stadium in Istanbul for some four thousand Catholics living in Turkey. In his homily, delivered in English with Turkish translation on the arena’s giant screens, he encouraged this small Catholic community—made up of Latin, Armenian, Chaldean and Syriac Catholics—to develop their faith life and be “sincerely committed to living a life of goodness, after the example of the numerous holy men and women who have dwelt in this land throughout the ages.”
Reiterating a leitmotif of his visit, Pope Leo called on Catholics in Turkey to work for peace and emphasized, “How great the need for peace, unity and reconciliation around us, within us and among us!” Drawing on the logo of his visit—which depicted the well-known bridge in Istanbul that crosses the Bosporus and links Asia and Europe—he urged this small Catholic community to “build bridges of unity on three levels: within the community, in ecumenical relations with members of other Christian denominations, and in our encounters with brothers and sisters belonging to other religions.”
He concluded his homily by telling them, “We journey as if on a bridge that connects earth to heaven, a bridge that the Lord has built for us. Let us always keep our eyes fixed on both shores, so that we may love God and our brothers and sisters with all our hearts in order to journey together and find ourselves one day united in the house of the Father.”
Tomorrow morning, Leo will participate in the Divine Liturgy at the Patriarchal Church of St. George, the seat of the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate, and afterwards have lunch with Patriarch Bartholomew before taking the two-hour flight to Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, for the second stage of his journey.
Gerard O’Connell is America’s senior Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History. He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.
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