ANKARA (AP) — Pope Leo XIV arrived in Turkey on Thursday on his first overseas journey, fulfilling Pope Francis’ plans to mark an essential Christian anniversary and convey a message of peace to the area at an important time in efforts to finish the struggle in Ukraine and ease Mideast tensions.
Leo was welcomed on the tarmac of Ankara’s Esenboga Airport by a navy guard of honor. Strolling alongside a turquoise carpet, he shook palms with Tradition and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, different officers and senior church figures from Turkey.
Later, he had a gathering deliberate with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a speech to the nation’s diplomatic corps. He’ll then transfer late Thursday on to Istanbul for 3 days of ecumenical and interfaith conferences that can be adopted by the Lebanese leg of his journey.
Talking to reporters on board his airplane, Leo acknowledged the historic nature of his first overseas journey and mentioned he has been wanting ahead to it due to what it means for Christians and for peace on the planet.
Leo mentioned he is aware of the go to to commemorate a key ecumenical anniversary was essential for Christians. However he mentioned he hoped his broader message of peace would resonate worldwide.
“We hope to additionally announce, transmit and proclaim how essential peace is all through the world. And to ask all individuals to come back collectively to seek for better unity, better concord, and to search for the ways in which all women and men can really be brothers and sisters despite variations, despite completely different religions, despite completely different beliefs.”
Leo’s go to comes as Turkey, a rustic of greater than 85 million predominantly Sunni Muslims, has solid itself as a key middleman in peace negotiations for the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
Ankara has hosted rounds of low-level talks between Russia and Ukraine and has provided to participate within the stabilization drive in Gaza to assist uphold the delicate ceasefire, engagements Leo could applaud in his arrival speech.
Response in Turkey
Turkey’s rising navy weight, as NATO’s largest military after the U.S., has been drawing Western leaders nearer to Erdogan whilst critics warn of his crackdown on the nation’s fundamental opposition celebration.
Although help for Palestinians and an finish to the struggle in Ukraine is widespread in Turkey, for Turks who face an ongoing cost-of-living disaster, owing to market turmoil induced by shake-ups in home politics, worldwide politics is a secondary concern.
That might clarify why Leo’s go to has largely escaped the eye of many in Turkey, at the least exterior the nation’s small Christian group.
“I didn’t know he was coming. He’s welcome,” mentioned Sukran Celebi. “It could be good if he known as for peace on the planet, however I don’t suppose it would change something.”
Some mentioned they thought the go to by historical past’s first American pope was about advancing the pursuits of the US, or maybe to press for the reopening of a Greek Orthodox spiritual seminary that has develop into a focus within the push for spiritual freedoms in Turkey.
“If the pope is visiting, meaning America desires one thing from Turkey,” mentioned Metin Erdem, a musical devices store proprietor within the touristic Galata district of Istanbul.
Historic anniversary
The principle impetus for Leo to journey to Turkey is to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Christianity’s first ecumenical council.
Leo will pray with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, non secular chief of the world’s Orthodox Christians, on the website of the A.D. 325 gathering in as we speak’s Iznik in northwestern Turkey, and signal a joint declaration in a visual signal of Christian unity.
Japanese and Western church buildings had been united till the Nice Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope.
Whereas the go to is timed for the essential Catholic-Orthodox anniversary, it would additionally permit Leo to strengthen the church’s relations with Muslims. Leo is because of go to the Blue Mosque and preside over an interfaith assembly in Istanbul.
Asgın Tunca, a Blue Mosque imam who can be receiving the pope, mentioned the go to would assist advance Christian-Muslim ties and dispel standard prejudices about Islam.
“We wish to replicate that picture by displaying the great thing about our faith by our hospitality — that’s God’s command,” Tunca mentioned.
Spiritual freedom in Turkey
Since coming to energy in 2002, Erdogan’s authorities has enacted reforms to enhance the rights of non secular teams, together with opening locations of worship and returning property that had been confiscated.
Nonetheless, some Christian teams face authorized and bureaucratic issues when attempting to register church buildings, in keeping with a U.S. State Division report on spiritual freedoms.
The Catholic Church, which counts round 33,000 members in Turkey, has no formal authorized recognition within the nation “and that is the supply of many issues,” mentioned the Rev. Paolo Pugliese, superior of the Capuchin Catholic friars in Turkey.
“However the Catholic Church enjoys a fairly notable significance as a result of now we have a global profile … and now we have the pope holding our backs,” he mentioned.
Potential tensions
One of many extra delicate moments of Leo’s go to will come Sunday, when he visits the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral in Istanbul. The cathedral has hosted all popes who’ve visited Turkey since Paul VI, except for Francis who visited Turkey in 2014 when its patriarch was sick.
Francis visited him on the hospital, and some months later he tremendously angered Turkey in 2015 when he declared that the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks was “the primary genocide of the twentieth century.” Turkey, which has lengthy denied a genocide passed off, recalled its ambassador to the Holy See in protest.
Leo has tended to be way more prudent than Francis in his public feedback, and utilizing such phrases on Turkish soil would spark a diplomatic incident. However the Vatican can be navigating a tough second in its ties with Armenia, after its interfaith overtures to Azerbaijan have been criticized.
