Pope Leo to visit Turkey and Lebanon on first overseas trip as pontiff | Pope Leo XIV
Pope Leo will make his first foreign trip as leader of the Catholic church on Thursday, traveling to Turkey and Lebanon on a six-day peace and unity mission that the Vatican says is expected to be a “challenging” schedule full of meetings with political and religious leaders amid rising tensions in the Middle East.
In Türkiye, where the majority are Muslim and an estimated 36 thousand Catholics live, the Chicago-born priest, who was elected in May, will first meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara.
He will also meet Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians, for the 1,700th anniversary celebrations of the great first church council in Nicaea (now Nicaea), which settled ideological disputes.
Leo’s arrival is especially anticipated in Lebanon; Here, many fear a deepening conflict between Israel and Hezbollah after four Hezbollah operatives and one of the group’s top military commanders were killed in an Israeli attack on a neighborhood in South Beirut earlier this week.
Leo’s predecessor Francis, who died in April, had planned to visit both countries but was unable to do so due to health problems.
Leo is seen as a more moderate, low-key operator than the charismatic but often divisive Francis, and his choice of Turkey and Lebanon for his first overseas trip is highly strategic, while also offering the pope an opportunity to show his style and personality to the world.
In recent weeks, Turkish media has been flooded with images of Vatican delegations touring the country, while in Beirut, banners showing the smiling face of Pope Leo adorned the stone exterior walls of churches in the central Christian neighborhoods of the Lebanese capital.
Vatican expert and Pope Benedict XIV. “This is a trip where Leo will promote peace, one of the central themes of his papacy, and he will have two different audiences in mind,” said Christopher White, author of Leo: The Conclave and the Dawn of the New Papacy.
“One will be world leaders: Turkey and Lebanon are strategic places for him to redouble peace efforts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and since this is his first trip abroad, he will closely attract the attention of world leaders after the trip.”
The second audience will be Christian leaders as Leo seeks to unite the region’s long-divided churches. White said he would specifically use the anniversary celebrations in Türkiye “to remind believers that their commonalities are greater than our differences.”
The Pope will also visit the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and celebrate Catholic mass at the city’s Volkswagen Arena.
Leo’s arrival in Lebanon on Sunday afternoon comes at a time when many fear a potential return to the two-month Israeli bombing campaign that blanketed southern Lebanon and Beirut last year.
Karim Emile Bitar, professor of international relations at Beirut Saint Joseph University, said Lebanon’s Christian community is looking to the pope for a message of unity at a time when the country is deeply polarized.
“This visit is important because the Vatican has historically been the main guardian of Lebanese national unity and Lebanon’s territorial integrity,” he said. “Most states have political or economic interests. The Vatican is one of the last moral authorities in the world that truly seeks to promote peace and justice without any hidden agenda.”
Bitar said he believed Leo would “find the right words” during a visit that “has the potential to demonstrate that global powers such as the Vatican can seek to heal divisions in Lebanese society without pursuing their own political interests.”
He added: “While this visit is symbolic and without the Vatican’s army and military influence, the fact that this is a man speaking to people with genuine good will may be more important than representatives of the heavily militarized regional powers pushing Lebanon towards disintegration.”
Leo will pray at the port of Beirut, where a deadly explosion destroyed much of the capital in 2020, and visit a psychiatric hospital run by the Catholic church.
A trip to Türkiye had been on the agenda for some time before Leo received his official invitation to Lebanon. Leaders hope the papal visit will draw world attention to a country in deep economic distress.
“He embraced it immediately,” said Andrea Vreede, the Vatican correspondent for the Dutch public radio and TV network NOS. “Going to Lebanon means being able to talk about peace in the Middle East in a war-torn country very close to Israel. I’m not sure if he will talk directly about Gaza, but it’s clear he will use Lebanon as a platform for peace.”
Meanwhile, Vreede added that the Lebanese “want some hope from him.” “It’s also a country going through a major economic crisis… They see this visit as the only miraculous thing that can help them.”
Leo has faced some criticism for not visiting Christian communities in southern Lebanon after Francis made a high-risk trip to Iraq in 2021, where he visited the northern city of Mosul, which has been devastated by Islamic State militants. “He won’t go there; it’s too unsafe,” Vreede said.
Meanwhile, Christians in other countries also hope he will visit them. Fahed Dahta, who is at the Maronite church in Bab Touma, a historical Christian neighborhood in Damascus, the capital of Syria, said that he was very happy about his visit to the region. “This visit is extremely important for people. We need peace in the Middle East. I want peace for the entire region and I want an end to the Israel-Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, Israel and Syria wars.” “He represents peace: He is the pope!”
