Leo XIV will set out on his first foreign trip as pope on the morning of Nov. 27, first to Turkey, a Muslim country with a tiny Christian population, and then, on Nov. 30, to Lebanon, the country with the highest proportion of Christians in the Middle East.

During his six-day journey, Pope Leo will deliver all his speeches and homilies in either English or French. 

The U.S.-born missionary pope is known to like traveling and had been to more than 50 countries as head of the Augustinian order before his election as the 266th successor to St. Peter. On this journey, he will be accompanied by four Vatican cardinals: Pietro Parolin, the secretary of state; Kurt Koch, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Christian Unity; Claudio Gugerotti, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Oriental Churches, and George Koovakad, the prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. Two Vatican archbishops will also travel with him: Edgar Pena Parra, the chief of staff of the Secretariat of State, and Paul Gallagher, the Vatican foreign minister. The trip will also include 81 accredited Vatican journalists, including America’s senior Vatican correspondent.

Turkey: An Ecumenical Journey

Leo is the fifth pope to visit Turkey after Paul VI (1967), John Paul II (1979), Benedict XVI (2006) and Francis (2014). The Argentine Jesuit pope had planned to return for the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, but he died on April 21; now Pope Leo comes in his stead to this country of 87 million people, more than 99 percent of whom are Muslim. Christians are a tiny minority, estimated to make up 0.2 to 0.4 percent of the population.

Ahead of the trip, Pope Leo published an apostolic letter on Nicaea under the Latin title “In Unitate Fidei” (in English: “In the unity of faith”), emphasizing how the fundamentally important declaration of faith expressed by that council is shared by Christian churches worldwide. The motto for his visit to Turkey also emphasizes unity: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” 

Leo will depart by plane from Rome and arrive in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, at 12:30 p.m. local time. There, he will be welcomed by a government minister and a guard of honor.

From the airport, the pope will be driven to the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the father of the modern republic, and the presidential palace for an official state welcome. He will then have a private meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the country’s president since 2014. Afterward, the president and the pope will address an audience of state authorities, representatives of civil society and the diplomatic corps.

After the official state welcome, the pope will fly to Istanbul, a city of 16 million people that straddles Europe and Asia, where he will reside for the three nights of his visit.

His second day in Turkey begins with a meeting with the country’s bishops, clergy and pastoral workers in the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, followed by a visit to a center for the elderly run by the Little Sisters of the Poor, where he will also greet some 500 staff, sponsors and other collaborators.

Nicaea at 1,700

In the afternoon, in this land where St. Paul was born and where the early Christian church flourished, Leo will travel 78 miles southeast of Istanbul by helicopter to the town of Iznik, formerly known as Nicaea. He will be welcomed at the airport by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, who will accompany him to the ruins of an ancient church for an ecumenical prayer service with representatives of other Christian churches.

There, Pope Leo, next to Patriarch Bartholomew, will preside at an ecumenical prayer service in front of an icon of Christ and the Council of Nicaea, at the ancient lakeside Basilica of St. Neophyte, a young Christian martyr, and commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the first ecumenical council that was held here in 325 C.E. and resulted in the confirmation of several core doctrines shared by almost all the Christian churches.

On his third day in Turkey, Nov. 29, Pope Leo—like his predecessors—will visit the 400-year-old Sultan Ahmet Mosque, commonly known as the Blue Mosque because of the color of the tiles that decorate the interior of this magnificent building, constructed between 1609 and 1612. There, he will be welcomed by the head of the Diyanet, the country’s religious affairs department.

Afterward, he will have a private meeting with the heads of the Christian churches and communities in Turkey at the Syriac Orthodox church of Mor Ephrem, the only church built in this country after the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923.

Later that afternoon, Pope Leo will participate with Patriarch Bartholomew in the Doxology, or hymn of praise, at the Patriarchal Church of St. George. Afterward, will have a meeting with the ecumenical patriarch, who though he has a tiny flock here in Turkey, is traditionally ranked as the first among equals of the bishop-leaders of the world’s some 250 million Orthodox Christians. The encounter will take place at the Patriarchal Palace, which is above the church in the Phanar (the Greek Orthodox equivalent of the Vatican), where they will sign a joint statement.

That evening, Pope Leo will preside at Mass at the Volkswagen Arena, an indoor venue that typically hosts concerts and basketball games, for 4,000 people, and deliver a homily in English.

On Sunday morning, Nov. 30, he will pray at the Armenian cathedral before going to the Patriarchal Cathedral of St. George, built in 1720, for a Divine Liturgy presided over by Patriarch Bartholomew. At the end of the liturgy, Leo XIV will speak, and then the pope and patriarch will impart an ecumenical blessing together. The two Christian leaders will then have lunch together before the pope travels to the Istanbul airport to depart for Beirut, Lebanon, for the second stage of his journey.

Lebanon’s Fragile Truce

Pope Leo XIV is the fourth pope to visit Lebanon, after Paul VI in 1964, John Paul II, who came here in 1997 after a 16-year civil war, and Benedict XVI, who made his last foreign trip here in 2012. Pope Francis had wanted to come, but he never made it due to the unresolved political problems in the country that left it without a president for two years until last January.

On the eve of Leo’s visit, the Lebanese Maronite bishop George Bacouni told some journalists, including America’s senior Vatican correspondent: “The Holy Father is coming at a very difficult moment for Lebanon and for our region. People are worried about the future. Many are suffering from the economic crisis, from instability and from fear because of the situation around us.” In addition to the challenges “faced by Christians everywhere, the digital revolution, new lifestyles, and changes in moral values,” he said, “we in Lebanon also face local difficulties: the economic collapse, the lasting effects of war, the emigration of young families, the lack of justice in the Beirut Port explosion case and at times a loss of trust in some church representatives.”

Pope Leo “is coming here to build peace,” he stated, pointing to the motto for his visit: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” The country has suffered much from war in recent years, and notwithstanding the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon signed on Nov. 27, 2024, Israel has conducted regular strikes on southern Lebanon, the Bekka Valley and at times on the outskirts of Beirut. Last Sunday, Nov. 23, Israel carried out another strike in Beirut, killing a Hezbollah leader and four other persons and injuring 28. 

In a statement on Nov. 5, Lebanon’s Maronite bishops publicly condemned “the daily attacks on the South and other regions of Lebanon, which are bringing the country to the brink of war once again.” According to local media reports, people are afraid that war will start again after the pope’s visit.

Daniel Corrou, S.J., the regional director of Jesuit Refugee Service Middle East & North Africa who is based in Beirut, said in a phone conversation last week that “cease-fire is a misnomer” in Lebanon, as it is in Gaza; he underlined the fact that drones fly over the city every day, and no one knows when they will strike. 

Father Carrou and J.R.S. also care for some of the more than one million Syrian refugees who are living in Lebanon, having fled the civil war that began in their homeland in 2014. He noted that this “small country with a big heart” has given them refuge, along with some 600,000 Palestinian refugees who have been living there for decades. 

This is the extraordinary situation that Leo XIV will encounter when his plane touches down in Beirut on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 30. 

There is immense joy among the people that Pope Leo is visiting their country, a third the size of Maryland. This joy is reflected in the fact that Lebanon’s Maronite Christian president, Joseph Aoun; Shiite Muslim president of the National Assembly, Nabih Berri; Sunni Muslim prime minister, Nawaf Salam; and the Maronite patriarch, Cardinal Béchara Boutros Raï, O.M.M., will all be at the airport to welcome him. 

On arrival there, Pope Leo will receive a state welcome with a military guard of honor, a 21-gun salute and the Vatican and Lebanese national anthems. From the airport, he will be driven to the presidential palace on a hill overlooking the city, where he will have three separate private conversations: with the president, the president of the national assembly and the prime minister. 

The presence of the three political leaders at the palace also reflects the agreement reached between Christians and Muslims after independence in 1943, according to which the president should be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister should be a Sunni Muslim, and the president of the national assembly a Shiite Muslim.

After those private conversations, the pope and the president will address an audience of 400 persons selected from the political and religious authorities, civil society and the diplomatic corps. Leo’s speech there is expected to focus on the need for peace and an end to armed conflict in Lebanon and in the Middle East.

After his speech, Leo will go to the apostolic nunciature in Beirut, the capital city, where he will reside during his three-day visit to this country of more than five million people, where 30 to 33 percent of the population is Christian and the majority are Muslim. Notwithstanding conflicts in the country since independence, the two communities have lived side by side in a witness to the region that Christians and Muslims can live together in peace. Or, as John Paul II said in 1997, “Lebanon is more than a country; it is a message.”

During his first full day in Lebanon, Monday, Dec. 1, Leo will visit the Christian sites best known in this land and meet bishops, clergy and laity who are active in pastoral ministry, as well as young people and members of other faiths.

“The land of the cedars” is the country in the Middle East with the largest number of Christians. When the last census was taken in 1932, Christians counted for 51.2 percent of the population, but a great many have since emigrated because of years of armed conflict, and many more are considering doing so. Pope Leo is expected to encourage them to stay and build peace in their homeland as a witness to the whole region that Christians and Muslims can live together in harmony.

In the morning, the pope will travel 25 miles by car to the Maronite Monastery of Saint Maron in the hill country outside Beirut that was built in 1828. There, he will pray at the tomb of St. Charbel Makhlouf, the famous miracle worker revered by Christians and Muslims alike whom Pope Paul VI canonized in 1977.

From the monastery, he will travel another 25 miles by car to the shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon on the hill of Harissa, inaugurated in 1908, overlooking the Bay of Jounieh, where Christians and Muslims from Lebanon and all over the Middle East come to pray. There, Leo will address the country’s 49 bishops, representatives of its 1,564 priests and 1,698 professed religious and some 500 pastoral workers. Afterward, he will have a private meeting with the patriarchs at the nunciature.

On Monday afternoon, the Augustinian pope will participate in an ecumenical and interreligious encounter with leaders of the Christian, Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities at the Square of the Martyrs in Beirut.

In the evening, he will travel 13 miles from Beirut to Bkerké, the headquarters of the Patriarchate of Antioch of the Maronites, on a hill overlooking the Bay of Jounieh, for a meeting with thousands of young Lebanese, with whom he will engage in a question-and-answer session before joining them in prayer.

On Tuesday morning, Dec. 2, he will visit patients and staff at a hospital for the sick and elderly run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Cross at Jal Ed Dib outside Beirut.

Afterward, in a much-awaited, somber event, Pope Leo will travel to the Port of Beirut and pray in silence at the memorial of the massive fertilizer explosion—considered one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history—in which more than 200 people were killed, over 700 injured and 300,000 left without a home.

Still today, despite repeated national and international requests for a full investigation, the Aug. 4, 2020, explosion remains shrouded in mystery and justice has not been delivered for the survivors and relatives of the victims. “The prosecutor has been stopped in his investigation and the judiciary system is not working due to the interference of the politicians. The victims have a right to know the truth,” Bishop George Bacouni told reporters. In fact, the Lebanese Catholic church is the only body that continues to press for justice and truth for the victims. After praying in silence, and without speeches in the face of this great suffering, Pope Leo will meet some of the survivors and relatives of the victims of the explosions.

From there, Pope Leo will go to Beirut Waterfront, where he will celebrate Mass for an estimated 100,000 people, including some 3,000 Catholics from Syria who have come for this historic event.

After Mass, Pope Leo will be driven to the airport to take the plane for a roughly four-hour flight back to Rome. En route, he is expected to hold a press conference—his first since becoming pope—and answer questions from journalists. His plane is scheduled to arrive at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport that afternoon at 4:10 p.m. America will publish a report on the press conference.

Gerard O’Connell is America’s senior Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History. He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.