Pope Leo will travel to Turkey and Lebanon in first international trip
By Christopher Lamb, CNN
(CNN) — Pope Leo XIV will make his first international trip by visiting Turkey and Lebanon where he is expected to focus on peace in the Middle East, meet political leaders and show his support to Christians in the region.
The first American pope will travel to Turkey from November 27-30 and then go to Lebanon from November 30 until December 2. While in Turkey, the pope will mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, an important church gathering which articulated Christian beliefs. The “Nicene creed” is still recited in churches across the world today. The Vatican said Leo will travel to the town of Iznik, modern day Nicaea, for the anniversary and while in Turkey is expected to meet Ecumenical Patriarch Batholomew, the spiritual leader of the approximately 300 million Eastern orthodox Christians.
Leo, speaking to reporters in Castel Gandolfo, said his trip to Lebanon would be an opportunity to bring “a message of peace in the Middle East in a country that has suffered so much,” and that he would seek to emphasise “peace and hope” while in the country.
The pope was talking to reporters outside the Villa Barberini, where he stays on his visits to the Vatican estate at Castel Gandolfo, a town approximately 16 miles southeast of Rome.
His trip to Turkey, Leo explained, is focussed on marking the Council of Nicaea anniversary and will be “a moment of authentic unity in faith” for all Christians. “We must not miss this historic moment,” he said. “But it is not to look back, it is to look forward.”
The Vatican said Leo was invited to visit Turkey and Lebanon by both civil and church leaders of both countries. Both are places Pope Francis had planned to visit before his health problems. The president of Lebanon Joseph Aoun, a Maronite Christian, invited Leo to visit the country when he met the pope in the Vatican in June. Lebanon is home to a significant Christian community, of which the Maronites are the largest, and the Vatican has paid close attention to the country’s political difficulties. In August, Leo sent a message for a service commemorating the 200 killed in the 2020 Beirut port explosion, and it’s expected that he will commemorate the victims while in Lebanon.
A detailed itinerary of his trip has yet to be released, but trips abroad are an opportunity for the pope to exercise soft power by addressing the country’s political leaders, meeting church leaders and those of different religions while supporting to the local Catholic community.
“We welcome this historic event with great joy and renewed hope,” Lebanon’s Council of Catholic Patriarchs and Bishop said in a statement. “We hope that this apostolic visit to Lebanon will bring peace and stability and be a sign of unity for all Lebanese, Christians and Muslims alike, at this critical stage in our nation’s history.”
Meanwhile, Rev. John Chryssavgis, an adviser to Patriarch Bartholomew, told Reuters that Leo’s visit showed he is “seeking to express and affirm his identity as a Christian in a world of many different creeds, where all people, regardless of religion and race, are called to live together in mutual understanding.”
In his comments outside the Villa Barberini, Leo spoke about the second anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israeli communities, saying efforts had to be made to reduce hatred in the world and that the church’s role is to promote dialogue and seek peaceful solutions.
“We need to think about how much hatred exists in the world and start asking ourselves the question of what we can do,” Leo said, adding that antisemitism is “worrying.”
The pope also responded to Israel’s Embassy to the Holy See accusing a top Vatican diplomat of “the problematic use of moral equivalence moral equivalence” in an interview on the October 7 anniversary. Cardinal Parolin, while describing Hamas’ attacks as an “inhuman massacre”, also that the Israeli army is carrying out an “ongoing massacre” in Gaza.
“The cardinal expressed the Holy See’s opinion very well,” Leo said.
The-CNN-Wire
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