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Pope Leo XIV encouraged Turkey to be a source of stability and dialogue in a world riven by conflict, as he opened his first foreign papal trip in Ankara on Thursday.
At his arrival in Ankara, the American pope was welcomed on the tarmac by a military guard of honour and at the presidential palace by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Speaking to Erdogan and the country’s diplomatic corps at a library in the palace complex, Leo praised Turkey’s historic role as a bridge between East and West, religions and cultures.
“May Turkey be a source of stability and rapprochement between peoples, in service of a just and lasting peace,” he said, speaking in front of a giant globe. “Today, more than ever, we need people who will promote dialogue and practice it with firm will and patient resolve.”
“The future of humanity is at stake”
Ankara has hosted unsuccessful talks between Russia and Ukraine, and has also offered to take part in the stabilisation force in Gaza to help oversee a fragile ceasefire.
The Pope didn’t cite the conflicts specifically, but he quoted his predecessor, Pope Francis, lamenting that the wars ravaging the world today amount to a “third world war fought piecemeal”, with resources spent on armaments rather than on fighting hunger and poverty and protecting creation.
After two world wars, “we are now experiencing a phase marked by a heightened level of conflict on the global level,” he said. “We must not give in to this. The future of humanity is at stake.”
Leo is the fifth Pope to visit Turkey after Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XIV and Pope Francis. His trip comes at a particularly fraught period in the Middle East, with a delicate cease-fire in Gaza and recent Israeli strikes in both Beirut and southern Lebanon.
However, his main reason for travelling to Turkey is to commemorate an important date in Orthodox-Catholic relations: the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Christianity’s first ecumenical council. In A.D. 325, that council hashed out the first version of the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith that millions of Christians still recite each Sunday.
A papal visit to celebrate the anniversary was promised by Pope Francis, who did not live to mark the date himself.
On Friday, the Pope will join Istanbul-based Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew to commemorate the anniversary, which took place in Iznik, some 90 kilometres southeast of Istanbul.
