Leaving Villa Barberini, where Pope Leo XIV spends his Tuesdays off, the pope spoke to reporters and shed some light on why he appeared not to pray, as his predecessors had, at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.

The pope visited the mosque, officially called the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, on Nov. 29, as part of his first international papal trip, during which he visited Turkey and Lebanon. At the mosque, the pope removed his shoes and was given a tour by Askin Musa Tunca, the muezzin who calls Muslims to prayer at the mosque five times per day.

Mr. Tunca told reporters afterward that he had offered the pope a moment of prayer but that Leo had told him, “That’s O.K.”

“I offered [to] him, if he would like to worship here, but he said ‘No, I am just going to look around,’” Mr. Tunca said.

Additional confusion arose when the Vatican issued a statement saying the pope had observed “a brief moment of prayer” and later issued a correction. A moment for prayer had been included in the booklet distributed to reporters before the trip explaining what would happen. Likewise, Mr. Tunca said he had been told beforehand that the pope would pray at the mosque.

Speaking to reporters last night, Pope Leo expressed surprise that so much had been made of the moment.

“They said I didn’t pray, but I already gave a response on the plane,” he said. “I mentioned a book,” he added, referring to The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, which, through conversations and letters, instructs the reader on how to develop, in Brother Lawrence’s words, “a habit of conversing with God continually.”

Pope Leo added, “I could be praying right now.”

Then, expanding on his decision not to take a moment of visible prayer, the pope suggested he was uncomfortable with “the style of prayer in that time and place,” adding, “In fact, I prefer to pray in a Catholic Church in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.”

Pope Benedict XVI had visited the Blue Mosque in 2006, and Pope Francis toured it in 2015. Both had paused for a moment of silence facing the mihrab, which indicates the direction of the Islamic holy city of Mecca. St. John Paul II was the first pontiff to visit a mosque when he went to the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, Syria, in 2001.

At that time, John Paul II did not appear to pray, but America’s senior Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell recalled on “Inside the Vatican” that he had spoken afterward to Cardinal Francis Arinze, who was at the time the Vatican’s prefect for interreligious dialogue and had visited the mosque with John Paul II. In response to his question about whether John Paul prayed there, the cardinal said, “Well, I will tell you. I prayed, and I imagine the pope prayed, too.”

Material from Catholic News Service was used in this report.

Colleen Dulle is the Vatican Correspondent at America and co-hosts the "Inside the Vatican" podcast. She is the author of Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter (Image, 2025).