Pope Leo XIV and Patriarch Bartholomew urge Christian unity in Iznik

Pope Leo XIV and Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople walk to attend an ecumenical prayer service near the sunken Byzantine Basilica of Saint Neophytos by Lake Iznik, on November 28. Pope Leo XIV is on a four-day visit to Turkey. Photo / Ozan Kose, AFP

Pope Leo XIV has called for unity among Christians at an ecumenical prayer service on the shores of Lake Iznik to celebrate 1700 years since one of the early Church’s most important gatherings.

On the second day of his visit to Turkey, Leo flew to Iznik, the ancient city of Nicaea on Friday (local time), where he joined Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians and other dignitaries at the site where the ancient gathering took place.

Richly dressed in ceremonial robes, they gathered on a wooden platform overlooking the ruins of a 4th-century basilica marking the spot where hundreds of bishops met in 325 to draw up the Nicene Creed, a text still central to Christianity today.

In the warm sunshine, they prayed together in multiple languages as a choir sang a cappella hymns in English, French, Greek, Latin and Turkish.

Speaking in English, the American Pope recalled how the council had unified the early Church by rejecting an Arian heresy questioning Jesus’ full divinity, with its anniversary “a precious opportunity to ask ourselves who Jesus Christ ... is for each one of us personally”.

“We are all invited to overcome the scandal of divisions that unfortunately still exist and to nurture the desire for unity,” he said before the leaders recited the Nicene Creed together in English.

Despite doctrinal differences that led to the Great Schism of 1054, resulting in a split between the Roman Catholic church in the West and the Eastern Orthodox church, the two sides maintain dialogue and hold joint celebrations.

Bartholomew’s address was also focused on the need for unity.

“With the fervour of the faith of Nicaea burning in our hearts, let us run the course of Christian unity that is set before us,” he said.

The Pope’s trip comes as the Orthodox world appears more fragmented than ever, with Russia’s actions in Ukraine accelerating the split between the Moscow and Constantinople patriarchates.

The leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics also issued a strong rebuke of faith as a justification for violence.

“We must strongly reject the use of religion for justifying war, violence or any form of fundamentalism or fanaticism. Instead, the paths to follow are those of fraternal encounter, dialogue and co-operation,” he said.

Separately, police in Iznik took away Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who shot and seriously wounded Pope John Paul II in Rome in 1981, Turkish media reported late on Thursday.

Agca – who was released from prison in 2010 – said he had hoped to meet the Pope, telling reporters: “I hope we can sit down and talk in Iznik, or in Istanbul, for two or three minutes.”

Unholy traffic

Leo began his four-day visit on Thursday in Ankara, where he urged President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to embrace Turkey’s role as a source of “stability and rapprochement between peoples” in a world gripped by conflict.

Earlier, he joined a prayer service at Istanbul’s Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, the police shutting down a main artery of Turkey’s largest city to allow his entourage to pass.

“It’s a blessing for us, it’s so important that the first visit of the Pope is to our country,” said a 35-year-old Turkish Catholic named Ali Gunuru, who was waiting for him outside the church.

Visibly moved, Leo could be seen smiling and looking much more at ease than on Thursday, encouraging his flock to reach out to the many migrants and refugees in Turkey, who number nearly three million, most of them Syrians.

The fate of refugees and migrants has been closely followed by the Holy See, with Leo recently criticising their “extremely disrespectful” treatment by the Government of US President Donald Trump.

Although his visit has drawn little attention in this Muslim-majority nation of 86 million, whose Christian community numbers only around 100,000, his impact on Istanbul’s notoriously bad traffic did not pass unnoticed.

“It’s an important visit for Istanbul, but we are the ones suffering. Of course it’s normal to take security measures, but no one thinks about the workers,” a 55-year-old woman called Fatmah told AFP, without giving her surname.

Pope Leo is the fifth pontiff to visit Turkey, after Paul VI in 1967, John Paul II in 1979, Benedict XVI in 2006 and Francis in 2014.

– Agence France-Presse