Pope Leo XIV wrapped up a four-day trip to Turkey yesterday after a warm welcome by its tiny Christian community, before heading to Lebanon with a message of peace for the crisis-mired nation.
On his first overseas trip since being elected leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, Leo met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before traveling to Iznik for a celebration marking 1,700 years since the First Council of Nicaea, one of the early Church’s most important gatherings.
On Saturday, the American pope hosted thousands of worshipers who battled the rain to attend a public mass in Istanbul, with many traveling from across Turkey to join the multilingual service, which left many moved by its beautiful and haunting choral interludes.
Photo: EPA/STRINGER
On his final morning, Leo attended a prayer service at the Armenian cathedral then joined a divine liturgy — the Orthodox equivalent of Mass — at the Patriarchal Church of St. George before a final blessing.
He was to have lunch with Patriarch Bartholomew I, the leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, a day after they signed a joint declaration in which they pledged to take “new and courageous steps on the path towards unity.”
Despite doctrinal differences that led to the Great Schism of 1054, resulting in a split between the Roman Catholic Church in the West and the Eastern Orthodox Church, the two sides maintain dialogue and hold joint celebrations.
They also agreed to continue their efforts to establish a common date for Easter, which is currently celebrated by Catholics and Orthodox Christians on different days.
The pope’s trip comes as the Orthodox world appears more fragmented than ever, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine accelerating the split between the Moscow and Constantinople patriarchates.
Pope Leo is the fifth pontiff to visit Turkey, after Paul VI in 1967, John Paul II in 1979, Benedict XVI in 2006 and Francis in 2014.
He was yesterday scheduled to leave Istanbul and fly to Beirut for a visit lasting until tomorrow.
The six-day two-nation trip is the first major international test for the first pope from the US, who was elected head of the Catholic Church in May and whose understated style contrasts with that of his charismatic and impulsive predecessor, Francis.
Although Leo’s visit drew little attention in Turkey, a Muslim-majority nation of 86 million whose Christian community numbers only about 100,000, it is eagerly awaited in Lebanon, a religiously diverse country of 5.8 million people.
Since 2019 Lebanon has been ravaged by crises, including an economic collapse, a devastating port blast in Beirut in 2020 and the recent war with Israel.
Tunisian President Kais Saied yesterday condemned a European Parliament resolution on human rights calling for the release of his critics as “blatant interference.” The EU Parliament resolution, voted by an overwhelming majority the day before, called for the release of lawyer Sonia Dahmani, a popular critic of Saied, who was freed from prison on Thursday, but remained under judicial supervision. “The European Parliament [resolution] is a blatant interference in our affairs,” Saied said. “They can learn lessons from us on rights and freedoms.” Saied’s condemnation also came two days after he summoned the EU’s ambassador for “failing to respect diplomatic rules.” He also
Sri Lanka made an appeal for international assistance yesterday as the death toll from heavy rains and floods triggered by Cyclone Ditwah rose to 123, with another 130 reported missing. The extreme weather system has destroyed nearly 15,000 homes, sending almost 44,000 people to state-run temporary shelters, the Sri Lankan Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said. DMC Director-General Sampath Kotuwegoda said relief operations had been strengthened with the deployment of thousands of troops from the country’s army, navy and air force. “We have 123 confirmed dead and another 130 missing,” Kotuwegoda told reporters in Colombo. Cyclone Ditwah was moving away from the island yesterday and
Firefighters battled one of Hong Kong’s deadliest modern blazes for a second day today, fighting to control a fire that blackened several high-rise towers and killed at least 44 people, with hundreds still missing. Three men from a construction company this morning were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter, and rescue efforts are ongoing. Thick smoke still poured out of the Wang Fuk Court (宏福苑) complex, which houses thousands, in Tai Po (大埔) district, a northern suburb near the border with the Chinese mainland, this morning. The fire that started midafternoon yesterday had spread across seven of the complex’s eight buildings, and
Under glaring laboratory lights, a research assistant extends his forearm and carefully inverts a mesh-topped container onto his skin to allow a wriggling mass of bed bugs to feed on his blood, all in the name of science. Loathed as itchy household pests, the blood-sucking insects have revealed a darker, more intriguing potential as Malaysian scientists have discovered they can be turned into unlikely crime-busting allies. A team from the Science University of Malaysia (USM) in northern Penang has found that tropical bed bugs can retain DNA from human prey for up to 45 days after snacking on an unwary victim. This makes
RSS