Pope Leo XIV ended his official visit to Turkey on 30 November in Istanbul before leaving for Lebanon, where he will seek to convey a message of hope to a population battered by years of crisis and to strengthen the role of Christian communities in the Middle East. His visit to Turkey was marked by a joint Catholic and Orthodox ceremony in the Turkish city of İznik to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the historic Council of Nicaea, which was the basis for defining Christian doctrine.
According to Turkish media reports, during his last day in Istanbul the pontiff received Andrea Minguzzi, father of Mattia Ahmet Minguzzi, the 14-year-old murdered by several minors last January in a local market, in a terrible case that shocked the whole country and reopened the debate on the need to increase penalties for crimes committed by minors. After the meeting, held at the Apostolic Nunciature (Vatican embassy) in Şişli, the father of the Turkish-Italian teenager expressed his emotion at the meeting with the Pope: “I cried today, but they were tears of joy; I came for Mattia Ahmet”, Minguzzi told the reporters, thanking the Pope for receiving him and for “fulfilling one of the biggest dreams of my life“.
Before leaving for his next stop in Beirut, Leo XIV attended two key events in Istanbul: a prayer at the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral, and a joint liturgy with Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I. At the Armenian cathedral, the Pope addressed words of encouragement to Turkey’s largest Christian minority – estimated at around 70,000 members – and thanked God for “the courageous Christian witness of the Armenian people throughout history, often in the midst of tragic circumstances”.
The Pope’s words were interpreted as a reference to the mass deaths of Armenians between 1915 and 1916 under the Ottoman Empire, which Armenia and its diaspora consider the first genocide in history, while Türkiye – successor to the Ottoman state, and which acknowledges that thousands died on both sides – considers it the result of the circumstances of World War I, denying that it was a deliberate genocide against the Armenians.
A day earlier, on Saturday 29 November, Leo XIV visited the iconic Blue Mosque, his first visit to a Muslim place of worship since his election as head of the Catholic Church in May. With this symbolic gesture, the new Pope follows in the footsteps of Benedict XVI, who visited the site in 2006, and Pope Francis, who did so in 2014 during his visit to Turkey. Leo stayed inside the mosque for about 15 minutes accompanied by Muslim dignitaries. Finally, before his departure for Lebanon and despite the rain, thousands of faithful flocked to the Volkswagen Arena in Istanbul to participate in the mass celebrated by Leo XIV in front of some 4,000 Christians.
VOTE
EDITORIAL TEAM
🧿 About us
.
Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
…
📣 Your ADVERTISING on Hispanatolia
.
🤗 HELP US WITH A DONATION:
💗 Paypal
