Pope Leo XIV begins his first trip since becoming the head of the Catholic church outside Italy on Thursday with a three-day visit to Türkiye, where he is expected to call for Christian unity and appeal for peace across the Middle East.
The pontiff, elected in May to succeed the late Pope Francis, chose Türkiye as his inaugural foreign destination to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the early Church council at Nicaea, which produced the Nicene Creed used by most Christians today.
He will later travel to Lebanon, which has the Middle East’s largest Christian population.
Leo, 70, departs Rome’s Fiumicino airport on Thursday morning for Ankara, where he will meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and address political leaders before travelling in the evening to Istanbul.
Vatican analysts said the trip offers the first substantial insight into Leo’s geopolitical outlook.
“This is the first big chance for him to make clear his views,” Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic, told Reuters.
In Istanbul, Leo will meet Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians, reflecting efforts to strengthen ties since the East–West Schism of 1054. The two leaders are due to travel on Friday to Iznik, formerly Nicaea, about 140 km (90 miles) southeast of the city, where early churchmen formulated the creed that still shapes mainstream Christian belief.
The Vatican said Leo will deliver his speeches in English rather than Italian, a departure from recent papal practice.
The pope, a relative unknown before his election, spent decades as a missionary in Peru before becoming a Vatican official in 2023. Francis had planned his own visit to Türkiye and Lebanon but was unable to travel owing to failing health.
Peace is expected to dominate the Lebanese leg of the trip, which begins on Sunday. The visit comes days after Israel killed the top military official in Hezbollah in an airstrike on a southern Beirut suburb despite a year-long, U.S.-brokered truce. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Monday that necessary security measures were being taken but declined to give details.
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