In Turkey, Pope Seeks to Soothe an Ancient Christian Divide

In Istanbul, Pope Leo XIV will meet the patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church to show amity between two of the world’s largest Christian groups.Tourists light candles during a visit to the Theological School of Halki, an Orthodox seminary shuttered by the Turkish government.Credit...Bradley Secker for The New York TimesIn Turkey, Pope Seeks to Soothe an Ancient Christian DivideIn Istanbul, Pope Leo XIV will meet the patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church to show amity between two of the world’s largest Christian groups.Tourists light candles during a visit to the Theological School of Halki, an Orthodox seminary shuttered by the Turkish government.Credit...Bradley Secker for The New York TimesSKIP Nov. 28, 2025It’s been 971 years since the great rift that led to centuries of rivalry between the Catholic Church in Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church in Constantinople, now Istanbul.Recent decades have seen a warming of ties between the two denominations, a rapprochement that Pope Leo XIV is seeking to build on during his four-day visit to Turkey, which began on Thursday.On Friday, he traveled east from Istanbul to Iznik, known as Nicaea in antiquity, where he stood alongside leaders from other Christian churches for a service overlooking the remains of the ancient Byzantine Basilica of Saint Neophytos.His visit to Turkey — a predominantly Muslim country with a tiny Catholic population — was the first international trip of his papacy. Friday’s ceremony, a key goal of the trip, commemorated the 1,700-year anniversary of a gathering in Nicaea at which Christian leaders defined tenets of their faith.By emphasizing that creed, which Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants believe regardless of other theological differences, the pope seeks to emphasize Christian unity, Vatican officials said.Speaking at the ceremony, Leo urged Christians from all traditions to focus on the beliefs that unite them in order to send “a message of peace and universal fraternity that transcends the boundaries of our communities and nations.”Leo also issued a broader call against “fanaticism” and the use of religion to justifying violence. “Instead, the paths to follow are those of fraternal encounter, dialogue and cooperation,” he said.He plans to meet with the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, in Istanbul on Saturday and dine with him on Sunday, before flying to Lebanon for Part 2 of the trip.“It bears a great symbolism for Christianity and it is definitely a very positive thing,” said Minas Vasiliadis, who runs Apoyevmatini, a Greek-language newspaper in Istanbul.ImageEcumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, during a service in Istanbul in 2022.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesThe meeting will not resolve longstanding differences between the congregations, Mr. Vasiliadis said, but greater amity can help “Christianity to accept its differences and move together in order to solve the problems of today.”Leo was joined in Iznik by dozens of representatives of other churches, including Bartholomew, who walked together to a raised platform overlooking the ruins of the ancient church. Its remains were hidden in a lake until a recent drop in the water level exposed them. While previous popes have come to Turkey, Leo was the first to visit the site.The pope and the patriarch hold very different positions in the world.Leo is the leader of the Catholic Church and head of Vatican state, surrounded by predominately Catholic Italy.Bartholomew heads the Eastern Orthodox Church from Istanbul; its followers are mostly elsewhere, in Greece and other parts of Europe, North America and Australia.Inside Turkey, he presides over a minuscule Greek Orthodox community, whose population has been shrinking for a century because of episodes of religious violence and government discrimination against ethnic Greeks and their institutions.ImageGreek tourists in an Orthodox church at the shuttered Theological School of Halki in Istanbul.Credit...Bradley Secker for The New York TimesGreek communities in Istanbul and elsewhere also paid the price for conflicts between Turkey and Greece, said Emre Oktem, a professor of international law at Galatasaray University in Istanbul.In the early 20th century, ethnic Greeks, who are overwhelmingly Orthodox, made up about 30 percent of Istanbul’s population of more than 1 million people. Now, only about 1,500 ethnic Greeks remain in Turkey, according to Mr. Oktem and other experts. Most live in Istanbul or on Turkish islands in Aegean Sea.Many churches where they once worshiped are now closed or nearly empty. The government has converted others to mosques. These include the Hagia Sofia, an ancient Byzantine cathedral and architectural marvel, whose reopening in 2020 as a Muslim house of worship dismayed many Christians.Their schools, too, have few students. This year, Istanbul’s Private Fener Greek High School, a towering, red, castle-like structure built in the 1880s, has only 31 students.International agreements keep the patriarch in Istanbul. But Turkey refers to him as the Patriarch of Fener, using the name of the neighborhood where his office is.ImageThe entrance to the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox monastery in Istanbul.Credit...Bradley Secker for The New York TimesOne big dispute between the Greek Orthodox and the Turkish government is the fate of the Theological School of Halki, a seminary opened in 1844 on an island in the Sea of Marmara, south of Istanbul, to train Orthodox clergy. The Turkish government shut it down in 1971.The patriarchate has been in talks with the government for years about the school, and President Trump asked President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to reopen it when they met last month in Washington.Seated next to Mr. Trump in the Oval Office, Mr. Erdogan said Turkey was “prepared to do whatever we need to do” about the seminary.“We appreciate it,” Mr. Trump replied.One recent Sunday morning, the baritone voices of two priests and their deacons echoed off the walls of the seminary’s church as they chanted an Orthodox Liturgy.At first, only one worshiper was in attendance. Later, a few dozen tourists from Greece and Albania entered the sanctuary, crossing themselves and kissing a large image of Mary and Jesus.ImageBishop Kassianos of Aravissos, the Abbot of the Holy Trinity Monastery.Credit...Bradley Secker for The New York TimesBishop Kassianos of Aravissos, the abbot of the Holy Trinity Monastery at the seminary, said in an interview that Pope Leo’s decision to visit Turkey on his first trip beyond Italy indicated the importance of the country and the patriarchate.“This shows respect between churches and how much loyalty there is to the historic values,” he said.Talks were going well with the government about the seminary, which the patriarchate wants to reopen as a private four-year university for 60 or 70 students, he said.“I believe we are step-by-step approaching the conclusion,” he said.The bishop vowed that despite their community’s many challenges, he and his brethren would keep working to maintain their historic presence.“The patriarchate has been here for 17 centuries and this seminary belongs to the patriarchate,” he said. “Until the last light is off, the last lamp is off, those will survive here.”Safak Timur contributed reporting from Istanbul.Ben Hubbard is the Istanbul bureau chief, covering Turkey and the surrounding region.Motoko Rich is the Times bureau chief in Rome, where she covers Italy, the Vatican and Greece.A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: On Trip to Turkey, Pope Seeks to Soothe Ancient Divide and Unite Christian Sects. 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