Pope Leo XIV’s peace pilgrimage to Turkey and Lebanon continues
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Earlier on Sunday, we learned that the Vatican-leased Airbus 320, which carried Pope Leo XIV, his entourage and 80 journalists to Türkiye on Thanksgiving, became safe for travel after its software was successfully updated.
Our flight to Lebanon continues. Hallelujah!
As a Fox News correspondent and producer, I’ve covered nearly a dozen papal tours, but four days into Pope Leo’s first international pilgrimage — this one takes the cake…or maybe it’s more appropriate to talk about the cake? Is this peace pilgrimage to the Middle East just a vacuum?
We definitely ate pies in the sky while flying from Rome. I was seated next to a colleague who brought pecan pie (which smelled amazing, no pun intended) and behind two colleagues who gifted our Chicago-born pope homemade pumpkin pies. Pope Leo jumped with joy! Our Thanksgiving dinner was less exciting but appreciated; served with a menu, real silverware and cloth napkins.
POPE XIV LEO STARTED VISIT TO LEBANON AMONG THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND INCREASING SECURITY CONCERNS
Pope Leo XIV was greeted by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and his wife Nehmat Nehmeh upon his arrival at Rafik Hariri International Airport during his first apostolic journey to Beirut, Lebanon, on November 30, 2025. (Muhammad Yasin/Reuters)
Fast forward, after three long, action-packed days, a 4,000-person mass was held in Istanbul for the country’s small Catholic community. (More than a million Christians, especially Armenians, were exterminated by the Ottoman Empire in World War I. Currently, most of the country’s 85 million people are Sunni Muslims. Catholics make up just 0.2% of the population.)
At Mass, I sat next to my colleague Elise Harris, the first person to qualify to interview Pope Leo (he chose a woman and an American, how cool!) and who baked one of those beautiful pumpkin pies. Pope Leo nodded almost imperceptibly and blessed us with the sign of the cross as he walked down the aisle next to us in a cloud of incense. Unbelievable!
During the homily, the pope spoke with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Turkish capital Ankara on Thursday, with Jewish religious leaders in Istanbul on Friday and later with the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. He returned to the themes of peace and unity he emphasized in Nicaea, where he met with Orthodox patriarchs and ecumenical leaders to commemorate the anniversary.
After his meeting and prayer with Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world Orthodox Christians, he signed a joint declaration showing Christian unity.
However, the Pope also talked about the need for unity with non-Christians. “We live in a world where religion is often used to justify wars and oppression,” he said. “To become peacemakers, we must break down the walls of prejudice and mistrust and appreciate what unites us.”
POPE LEO XIV OPENED HIS FIRST FOREIGN TRIP IN Türkiye WITH A VISIT TO THE FIRST CENTER OF CHRISTIANITY
One of the people who was not invited to the meeting with the pope in Iznik was Pope Paul II in St. Peter’s Square of the Vatican in 1981. It was Turkish citizen Mehmet Ali Ağca who shot and seriously injured Jean Paul. Ağca was released from prison in 2010 after completing his sentences in Italy and Türkiye and currently lives in Iznik. He never explained the reason for the assassination attempt, but Turkish media quoted him as saying he hoped to meet Leo “for two or three minutes.” Instead he was taken out of town.
Sometimes history repeats itself.
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI I was in Istanbul for Fox News Radio to cover Benedict’s conciliatory visit, aimed at quelling violent uproar over comments he made in a speech in Germany; here he quoted a Byzantine emperor as saying that Islam was spread “by the sword.”
It was a big deal when Benedict was seen with his head bowed and his lips moving in the Blue Mosque, the most important Muslim place of worship in the country. “The Pope is praying!” my colleague at Reuters excitedly shouted in the press room. I remember him shouting. Yes, I thought he might be doing this, but how can I explain the significance of this with a 30-second audio clip?
Pope Francis also visited the Blue Mosque in 2014 and prayed openly. So it was natural to assume that our new pope would do the same. The Vatican press office even said this in its daily statement.
But we “vaticanists” were at the Blue Mosque on Saturday morning, leaving our shoes at the entrance and putting on our headscarves, and we clearly saw that there was no pause!
Press spokesman Matteo Bruni later explained that the pope visited the mosque “in silence, in the spirit of reflection and listening, with a deep respect for the place and the faith of those who gather here for prayer.”
This description of the spirit of “thinking and listening with respect for others” actually captures the essence of this 70-year-old Midwesterner.
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His first words after stepping onto the world stage six months ago, chosen to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, were: “Peace be with you.”
But it is too early to see how his message of unity and brotherhood of humanity will resonate in the conflict-ridden Middle East.
