Pope Leo to meet Middle East Christian leaders in bid for unity

ISTANBUL - Pope Leo will meet in Turkey on Friday with Christian leaders from across the Middle East, and is expected to urge unity among denominations divided for centuries during his first overseas trip as leader of the global Catholic Church.

The first U.S. pope will attend a celebration for the 1,700th anniversary of a landmark early Church council, held in modern Turkey. It produced the Nicene Creed, still used by most of the world's 2.6 billion Christians today.

Friday's ceremony is the central impetus for Leo's four-day visit to mainly Muslim Turkey, where he is being closely watched as he makes his first speeches overseas and interacts for the first time with people outside largely Catholic Italy.

Leo, a relative unknown on the world stage before becoming pope in May, arrived in Turkey on Thursday. In his first overseas speech, he lamented that the globe was seeing an unusual number of bloody conflicts.

At an event with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the pope warned that a third world war was being "fought piecemeal", with humanity's future at risk.

POPE MEETING CHRISTIAN LEADERS FROM EGYPT, ISRAEL

Travelling abroad has become a major feature of the modern papacy, with popes drawing international attention as they lead events with crowds sometimes in the millions, give foreign policy speeches and carry out international diplomacy.

Leo will travel on Friday to Iznik, 140 km (90 miles) southeast of Istanbul and once called Nicaea, where early churchmen formulated the Nicene Creed, which lays out what remain the core beliefs of most Christians today.

He will be joined by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world's 260 million Orthodox Christians, as well as other Christian leaders from countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Israel.

Orthodox and Catholic Christians split in the East-West Schism of 1054, but have generally sought in recent decades to build closer ties.

While Turkey now has about 33,000 Catholics among a population of about 85 million, Vatican statistics show, it was once a flourishing land for Christianity, home to important early saints such as the apostles Philip, Paul and John.

Leo met with Turkey's small Catholic community on Friday morning. Amid shouts of "Viva il papa" (Long live the pope) at Istanbul's Holy Spirit Cathedral, he urged the Catholics not to seek political influence.

He said they should focus on helping migrants in Turkey, home to nearly 4 million foreigners, about 2.4 million of them Syrian, along with migrants from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq.

Leo has made care for migrants a key priority of his six-month papacy, frequently criticizing the anti-immigration policies of U.S. President Donald Trump.

CROWDED ITINERARY IN TURKEY, LEBANON

Leo, 70 and in good health, has a crowded itinerary during his six-day overseas trip.

In Turkey, he will also visit Istanbul's Blue Mosque on Saturday, in his first visit as pope to a Muslim place of worship, and will celebrate a Catholic Mass at the city's Volkswagen Arena.

Peace is expected to be a key theme of the pope's visit to Lebanon, which starts on Sunday.

Lebanon, which has the largest share of Christians in the Middle East, has been rocked by the spillover of the Gaza conflict, as Israel and the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim militant group Hezbollah went to war, culminating in a devastating Israeli offensive.

Leaders in Lebanon, which hosts 1 million Syrian and Palestinian refugees and is also struggling to recover after years of economic crisis, are worried Israel will dramatically escalate its strikes in coming months and hope the papal visit might bring global attention to the country. REUTERS