Leo XIV begins his first foreign tour and will meet Erdogan on Thursday / “First important occasion” to clarify an important thing about the Pope

Pope Leo begins his first trip outside Italy on Thursday with a visit to Turkey, where he is expected to call for peace in the Middle East and urge unity among Christian churches.

The first American pope has chosen Turkey, a Muslim-majority country, as his first foreign destination to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the landmark church council that produced the Nicene Creed.

Pope Leo, who has a busy three-day schedule in Turkey before heading to Lebanon, will be closely watched as he delivers his first foreign speeches and visits sensitive cultural sites.

People are waiting to see how the Pope sees today's world and the conflicts that endanger it. “It's a very important trip because we still don't know much about Leo's geopolitical views, and this is the first important opportunity for him to clarify them,” Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic who follows the Vatican's work, told Reuters.

Pope Francis goes to Ankara, then to Istanbul, to Patriarch Bartholomew

An important part of the modern papacy is foreign travel, when popes attract international attention to events with millions of people, give foreign policy speeches and engage in international diplomacy.

Leo XIV was elected in May by the world's cardinals to succeed the late Pope Francis. Relatively unknown on the world stage before his election, he spent decades as a missionary in Peru and only became a Vatican official in 2023.

Francis also intended to visit Turkey and Lebanon, but was unable to go due to his deteriorating health.

Leon, 70, will depart Rome's Fiumicino Airport in the morning and first visit the Turkish capital, Ankara, where he will meet President Tayyip Erdogan and address political leaders.

On Thursday evening he will fly to Istanbul, the residence of Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the 260 million Orthodox Christians in the world.

Orthodox and Catholic Christians separated following the Schism of 1054, but in recent decades have generally sought to build closer relations.

Leon and Bartholomew will travel on Friday to Iznik, 140 km southeast of Istanbul, the city once called Nicaea, where the first clerics formulated the Nicene Creed, which sets out what remains the fundamental belief of most Christians today.

In a departure from usual practice – popes usually speak Italian on their trips abroad – Leo is expected to speak English in his speeches in Turkey.

Peace, the key theme of the visit from Lebanon

Peace is expected to be the key theme of the pope's visit to Lebanon, which begins on Sunday. Lebanon has the highest percentage of Christians in the Middle East.

Last Sunday, Israel killed the top military official of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in an airstrike on a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut, despite a year-long US-brokered truce.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Monday that the necessary security measures were being taken to ensure the pope's safety in Lebanon, but declined to comment on the details.

Leaders in Lebanon, home to 1 million Syrian and Palestinian refugees and struggling to recover from years of economic crisis, hope the pope's visit will draw global attention to the country.