ANKARA, Turkey —Pope Leo XIVtouched down in the conflict-riddenMiddle Easton the first international trip of his papacy, urging peace and hoping to help theCatholic Churchheal centuries-old divisions with other religions and denominations.
As his fellow countrymencelebrate Thanksgiving, the first American pontiff's plate will be full on a six-day tour of Turkey andLebanonthat will be closely scrutinized. He plans to meet with religious and political leaders, lead Mass in both countries and try to provide a boost to long-suffering Christian communities throughout the region.
Ahead of his trip, Leo shared a Thanksgiving message with NBC News in which he encouraged all people "to say 'thank you' to someone" and "to recognize that we have all received so many gifts, first and foremost the gift of life."
Gifts were shared aboard his flight to the Turkish capital, Ankara, including a pecan pie handed to him by an NBC News correspondent. Leo told journalists that along with other church leaders, he hoped "to announce, transmit, proclaim how important peace is throughout the world and to invite all people to come together to search for greater unity."
Later, in his first overseas speech since his election in May to lead the 1.4 billion-member church, Leo told Turkish political leaders that the world was experiencing "a heightened level of conflict on the global level, fueled by prevailing strategies of economic and military power."
"We must in no way give in to this," he added. The future of humanity is at stake."
Some had speculated that theChicago-born Leomight choose the U.S. for his first trip, or Peru, where he served for many years as a missionary and later as a bishop and archbishop, becoming a naturalized citizen in 2015.
But for Miles Pattenden, a Catholic Church historian at the U.K.'s University of Oxford, the choice of the Middle East was "not such a surprise," and it was sending out a message that the region "is the heart of Christianity."
Turkey, where Leo will stay until Sunday, was the "obvious choice" because it was the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Christianity's first ecumenical council, Pattenden told NBC News in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Convened by Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, the meeting of bishops and church leaders "produced the Nicaean creed, which is the standard statement of what Christians believe," including the affirmation that Jesus was the son of God, Pattenden said.
He added that it was "absolutely foundational" to what Christians, including Catholics, believe today.
Leo will pray with the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, at the site of the 325 A.D. gathering in what is known today as Iznik, before they sign a joint declaration in a sign of Christian unity.
"We all understand that 1,000 years of division has inflicted a deep wound that cannot be healed easily," Bartholomew told the respected Greek daily Kathimerini recently, according to The Associated Press.
He added they had an obligation "to heal that wound" created by the Great Schism of 1054, which saw the Eastern and Western churches divide, largely over disagreements about the primacy of the pope.
While ancient rifts may be healed, the visit will also offer the pontiff the chance to speak about modern-day conflicts in the region, which has been wracked bytwo years of war in Gaza,the Israeli military's near daily attacks in Lebanon — home to one of the largest group of Christians in the Middle East — and U.S. and Israelistrikes on Iran.
Israeliairstrikes over southern Lebanonhave intensified in recent weeks, and on Sunday they pounded the country's capital, Beirut, for the first time since June. Five people were killed and 25 wounded, Lebanon's Health Ministry said.
Israel said the strikes, launched almost exactly a year after a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war, killed the militant group's chief of staff, Haytham Ali Tabatabai.
As well as meeting religious leaders, Leo will meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and President Joseph Aoun in Lebanon.
"Turkey is an important country, and it has a lot of influence throughout the Middle East," Pattenden said. "The visit does recognize that Turkey is an important regional power."
On the second part of his trip, in Lebanon, Leo will spend time in silent prayer at the site of theBeirut port blast in August 2020, which killed at least 218 people and wounded thousands more as it devastated large swaths of the city.
Sparked when hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate detonated in a warehouse, the blast caused billions of dollars in damage and later enraged Lebanese citizens as it emerged government negligence may have been at fault. A probe into the explosion has repeatedly stalled, and five years on, no official has been convicted.
Pattenden said the choice of countries "allows him to draw attention and show sympathy with the issues surrounding the region, without putting himself in a location that would be really controversial," like Gaza or Israel.
Leo's predecessor, thelate Pope Francis"did attract controversy because he was obviously on one side of the Israel-Gaza conflict, and I do think in certain quarters of the Catholic Church that did cause some disquiet because he was in conflict with the Israeli government," Pattenden said.
Leo, he added, "was more politically calculating" and "has so far, in almost every area, he has found ways of treading this line whereby he continues with Francis' agenda but in ways that are much less antagonistic to those who were previously critical of it."
Significantly, he said Leo would be speaking nearly exclusively in English on this trip, with a little French in Lebanon. Previous pontiffs have used the Italian lingua franca of the Vatican in favor of languages that are more widely understood.
Leo is "going to be able to address TV audiences all over the world unmediated," Pattenden added. "So it will be very interesting to see what impact that has."
