This story has been updated.
By Gary Gately
Warning that “the future of humanity is at stake” in a world beset by conflicts, Pope Leo XIV opened his first international trip as pontiff Thursday with a passionate plea for peace in Turkey.
Leo’s dire warning came during an address to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the nation’s diplomatic corps in the rotunda of the National Library of the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey’s capital.
On the first day of his six-day trip to Turkey and Lebanon, the first U.S.-born pope held out hope that Turkey could serve “as a source of stability and rapprochement between peoples, in service of a just and lasting peace.”
“Today, more than ever, we need people who will promote dialogue and practice it with firm will and patient resolve,” Leo said, speaking in front of a huge globe.
Leo, who spoke after meeting privately with Erdoğan, lamented “a heightened level of conflict on the global level, fueled by prevailing strategies of economic and military power,” triggering what his predecessor, the late Pope Francis, called a “third world war fought piecemeal.”
“We must in no way give in to this,” Pope Leo said. “The future of humanity is at stake!”
The “destructive dynamic” of conflicts ravaging the world divert energy and resources from the “real challenges that the human family should instead be facing together today, namely peace, the fight against hunger and poverty, health and education and the protection of creation,” Leo said.
The leader of the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church praised Turkey’s “cultural, artistic and spiritual richness, saying it “reminds us that when different generations, traditions and ideas meet, great civilizations are forged in which development and wisdom are drawn together into a unity.”
“This land is inextricably linked to the origins of Christianity, and today it beckons the children of Abraham and all humanity to a fraternity that recognizes and appreciates differences,” he said, while decrying “ambitions and choices that trample on justice and peace” and calling for unity and dialogue among different faiths.
“We like to distinguish ourselves from those who do not profess our faith: our Orthodox brothers, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, believers and non-believers of other religions,” Leo said. “It seems logical that everyone should mind their own business, their own family or national traditions, keeping within the limited circle of their own community. My dear brothers and sisters, my dear children, I must tell you that in the light of the Gospel and of Catholic principles, this is a false logic.”
For his part, Erdoğan, who spoke at the meeting before Leo, praised the pontiff’s visit to Turkey as a “very important step that strengthens our common ground.”
Erdoğan, who has repeatedly pointed to what he portrays as his country’s key role as an intermediary in efforts to end the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, said he shares the view of Leo and the Vatican in their “steadfast stance’ calling for Palestinian statehood, saying it would fulfill humanity’s “greatest debt to the Palestinian people.”
The Turkish president also praised Leo for his efforts to end the war in Ukraine, adding, “This war must end now.”
Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country of more than 85 million people, has hosted five rounds of talks between Ukraine and Russia, dating to the first, weeks after Russian President Vladimir V. Putin launched Russia’s unprovoked full-scale invasion on its neighbor on February 24, 2022. Ankara also recently offered to participate in a stabilization force to help oversee the fragile ceasefire in Israel, but Israel accuses Turkey of supporting the militant Islamist group Hamas and has ruled out any Turkish role in a stabilization force.
In his speech, Erdoğan cited religious diversity in his country, where more than 99% of the population is Muslim and the proportion of Christians has declined precipitously during the 20th century. In cities across the country, Erdoğan said: “You can see mosques, churches and synagogues side by side. They are witnesses to our culture of coexistence.”
Pope Francis, never one to mince words, riled Turkish leaders a year after his 2014 visit to the country when he declared Ottoman Turks’ massacre of some 1.5 million Christian Armenians from 1915 to 1923 “the first genocide of the 20th century.” A wide range of historians have characterized the Ottoman Turks mass slaughter of Christians as a genocide
Erdoğan made no mention Thursday of the continual criticism he has faced from women’s rights activists over withdrawing in 2021 from the Istanbul Convention, signed a decade earlier to protect women from violence and ratified by more than two-dozen European countries and the European Union. This year alone, the Turkish advocacy group We Will Stop Femicide has documented the deaths of 237 women killed in the country, most by husbands, partners or relatives, and another 247 found dead under suspicious circumstances.
Erdoğan released a plan this week that he says is aimed at combating violence against women.
Leo, who has generally been more reserved than Francis in his public comments (but has repeatedly criticized U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s hard-line immigration policies), said women in Turkey, “through their studies and active participation in professional, cultural and political life, are increasingly placing themselves at the service of your community and its positive influence on the international scene.” The pontiff called on the nation’s leaders to “greatly value, then, the important initiatives in this regard, which support the family and the contribution that women make toward the full flowering of social life.”
Francis, who died in April at age 88, had planned to travel to Turkey and Lebanon to promote interreligious dialogue and peace in a war-weary region beset by political and religious divisions and, especially, to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, in ancient Nicaea (now the lakeside town of İznik, southeast of Istanbul), where the Council took place in 325 A.D. But illness prevented Francis, the Argentine Jesuit, from making the trip,
Before Leo’s address at the Presidential Palace, he visited the Mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who led the movement that resulted in the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 and served as its first president. Two soldiers laid at the tomb a wreath bearing the name of Leo, who wrote in the Book of Honor: “I give thanks to God for being able to visit Turkey, and I invoke upon this country and its people an abundance of peace and prosperity.”
The 70-year-old Leo, who had ministered to the poor and the marginalized for two decades as a missionary priest and bishop in Peru, told journalists aboard the papal plane on the trip from Rome that he had been eagerly awaiting the trip largely because of its significance to Christians with the celebration of the anniversary of the 1,700th anniversary of the the Council of Nicaea.
He will join Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians, and other spiritual leaders for an ecumenical prayer service Friday near the archaeological ruins of an ancient church in what is now İznik, where a Christian gathering in 325 A.D. formulated the Nicene Creed, still recited by Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians.
And at a June 28 audience at the Vatican with a delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Leo underscored his commitment to strengthen Catholic-Orthodox relations “to restore full visible communion between our Churches,” which he said could be attained only “through a continued commitment to respectful listening and fraternal dialogue.”
Leo emphasized another key goal of his first apostolic trip, telling journalists aboard the papal plane en route from Rome to Ankara: “We hope to also announce, transmit and proclaim how is important peace throughout the world and to invite all people to come together to search for greater unity, greater harmony and to look for the ways that all men and women can truly be brothers and sisters. In spite of differences, in spite of different religions, in spite of different beliefs, that we are all brothers and sisters, and to hopefully be a part of promoting peace, unity throughout the world.”
The Chicago-born Leo greeted each of the journalists personally, traded jokes and posed for photos. Many of them brought him gifts, including pumpkin pies to mark Thanksgiving, a collage of photos from the pope’s childhood and his days as missionary in Peru, even a baseball bat that once belonged to Nellie Fox, a famed player for Leo’s beloved Chicago White Sox star during the 1950s and early 1960s.
The bat had been an heirloom in the family of CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay, who gave it to the pontiff, who thanked Livesay, then quipped: “How did you get this through security?”
Leo wished the Americans onboard a happy Thanksgiving and thanked the Vatican press corps for their work.
“It’s so important today that the message be transmitted in a way that really reveals the truth and the harmony that the world needs,” he said. “And thanks for being part of this historic moment.”
Read the full text of Pope Leo XIV’s address to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the nation’s diplomatic corps.
Leo departed from Ankara Thursday evening for Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, and has a packed agenda in the nation through Sunday afternoon, when he leaves for Beirut, Lebanon.
Next: Day 2 of Pope Leo XIV’s six-day apostolic journey, Friday, November 28 (Istanbul, İznik, Istanbul)
9:30 a.m.: Meeting with Catholic bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated women and men and pastoral workers at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, Istanbul. Speech by pope.
10:40 a.m. Visit to a nursing home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor, Istanbul.
2:15 p.m.: Transfer by helicopter to İznik.
3:30 p.m.: Ecumenical prayer service commemorating the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea near the archaeological excavations of the ancient Basilica of St. Neophytos, İznik. Speech by pope.
4:30 p.m.: Transfer by helicopter to Istanbul.
6:30 p.m.: Private meeting with bishops in the Apostolic Delegation, Istanbul
