Pope Leo XIV on his first foreign trip has sent a strong message about how he sees his role as a peacemaker by choosing a region rife with religious divisions and conflict. Historically the birthplace of Christianity, it is now home to reduced and marginalised Catholic communities.
In Turkey and then Lebanon, the Pope has spoken out for peace and reconciliation, notably for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He has offered to act as a “mediating voice” with Israel, and worked to bridge divisions between Catholic and Orthodox communities.
Fulfilling his predecessor Francis’s wish to be the first pope to visit Iznik, the ancient Turkish site of Nicaea, he celebrated the 1,700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council held in 325, where bishops had agreed the foundational creed that all Catholics and most Christians still recite.
The pontiff spent three days in Turkey, where he met president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leaders of Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches as well as government officials, and visited Istanbul’s Blue Mosque. He then travelled on to Lebanon, the only Arab country with a Christian head of state, President Joseph Aoun. He is meeting leaders from the country’s 18 officially recognised religious sects and his visit includes an open air mass in Beirut’s port, where 230 people died in the devastating 2020 explosion.
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Lebanon’s Christian communities, a third of its five million population, represent an important cohort of Catholicism in the Middle East, but many fear marginalisation in a country battered by war with Israel on its southern border and riven by sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shia Muslims represented by Hizbullah.
Leo acknowledged the violence and poverty that could drive young people to emigrate, and the value of building a diaspora. However, he urged the Lebanese people not to abandon their troubled country, saying “we must not forget that remaining in our homeland and working day by day to develop a civilisation of love and peace remains something very valuable.”
