Pope Leo to visit eight cities in Turkey, Lebanon on first trip abroad as pontiff
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Pope Leo will visit Turkey from Nov 27 to Nov 30, and then will be in Lebanon from Nov 30 to Dec 2.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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VATICAN CITY – Pope Leo will visit eight towns and cities in Turkey and Lebanon later in 2025, the Vatican said on Oct 27, his first trip outside Italy as pontiff, and he is expected to make appeals for peace across the region.
Pope Leo, the first US pope, will visit Turkey from Nov 27 to Nov 30, and then will be in Lebanon from Nov 30 to Dec 2.
His predecessor Pope Francis had planned to visit both countries but was unable to go because of his worsening health. Pope Francis died on April 21 and Pope Leo was elected as the new pope on May 8
A central part of the visit to Turkey will be several joint events with Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians, and is based in Istanbul.
They will celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of a major early Church council, which took place in Nicaea, now called Iznik.
“It is profoundly (symbolic) that Pope Leo... will visit (the patriarch) on his first official journey,” Reverend John Chryssavgis, an adviser to Patriarch Bartholomew, told Reuters.
Pope Leo will also meet Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in the capital Ankara, visit the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and will celebrate a Catholic mass at Istanbul’s Volkswagen Arena.
In Lebanon, the Pope will meet Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in Beirut, will host an inter-religious meeting and will lead an outdoor mass on the Beirut waterfront.
The Pope will also pray at the site of the 2020 chemical explosion at the Beirut port that killed 200 people and caused billions of dollars worth of damage.
Travelling abroad has become a major part of the modern papacy, with popes seeking to meet local Catholics, spread the faith, and conduct international diplomacy.
A new pope’s first travels are usually seen as an indication of the issues the pontiff wants to highlight during his reign.
Both Turkey and Lebanon are majority Muslim countries, and Pope Francis put a strong focus on Muslim-Catholic dialogue during a 12-year reign that included 47 trips abroad.
The official motto of Pope Leo’s Lebanon trip is “Blessed are the peacemakers”. REUTERS
