The pontiff’s first speeches abroad and visits tense cultural sites will be closely watched as he prepares a crowded three-day itinerary in Turkiye starting on Thursday and then travels to Lebanon.
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Foreign travel has grown to be a significant component of the modern papacy, with popes attracting attention from around the world by leading events with crowds of up to 100,000, giving speeches on foreign policy, and running international diplomacy.
Leo, 70, will travel to Turkey’s capital, Ankara, where he will meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and address political leaders, on Thursday at around 06:40 GMT. He was scheduled to leave with his entourage from Rome’s Fiumicino airport.
The landmark early church council in Turkiye, where the Nicene Creed is still revered by the majority of Christians around the world, is where the first pontiff from the United States will travel.
The world’s cardinals elected Leo in a conclave in May to succeed Pope Francis. Before his election, Leo, a relative stranger on the global stage, spent decades as a missionary in Peru before acclimating to the Vatican in 2023.
Francis had planned to travel to Turkiye and Lebanon, but his health was preventing him from doing so.
Leo will then make a brief stop in Istanbul on Thursday evening, which was previously known as Constantinople, the Roman Empire’s capital.
The #PapaLeoneXIV is a continuation of the #Turchia #Türkiye, the first apostolico-first viaggio.
The Italian city of Fiumicino is known for its romanesque architecture, and italy Airlines giungered an image for the film. twitter.com/yHd6oMWLkx
Pope Leo will make his first apostolic trip to Turkiye, according to translation. He is seen arriving at the Fiumicino airport in Rome, where he will board an Italian Airways flight to Ankara.
Leo is the only pope to visit Turkiye after Paul VI in 1967, John Paul II in 1979, Benedict XVI in 2006, and Francis in 2014. In Istanbul, the city’s largest Catholic church at St. Anthony Padua Parish, preparations are in progress.
Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the 260 million Orthodox Christians in the world, resides in Istanbul.
Orthodox and Catholic Christians split in the East-West Schism in 1054, but they have generally made efforts to reunite in recent years.
Leo and Bartholomew will travel to Iznik, a city 140 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Istanbul, on Friday, where the Nicene Creed, which outlines what are still held by the majority of Christians today, was created. There, it was once called Nicaea, which was 140 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Istanbul.
Leo is expected to speak English in his speeches in Turkiye in a change from what is customary for popes to speak Italian on official occasions.
Leo will travel to Lebanon, a religiously diverse country, on Sunday after being devastated by an economic and political crisis since 2019 and the target of numerous Israeli bombings in near-daily violations of an agreement reached a year ago to end the war.
Since the breakaway of the truce, Israel has killed more than 330 Lebanese.
In an airstrike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sunday, Israel carried out the murder of Haytham Ali Tabatabai, the Lebanese government’s chief of staff.
Source: Aljazeera
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