Pope Leo XIV lamented that the world was seeing an unusual number of bloody conflicts during his first trip outside Italy as Catholic leader on Thursday, and he warned that a third world war was being “fought piecemeal”, with humanity’s future at risk.
In his first speech given overseas since his election in May to lead the 1.4-billion-member church, the first American pope said “ambitions and choices that trample on justice and peace” were destabilising the world.
He told political leaders in Turkey that the world was experiencing “a heightened level of conflict on the global level, fuelled by prevailing strategies of economic and military power”.
“We must in no way give in to this,” he said at an event with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan after they held a private meeting. “The future of humanity is at stake.”
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Speaking before the pope, Mr Erdogan said that he welcomed Leo’s “astute stance” on the Palestinian issue, and hoped the visit would be beneficial for humanity at a time of tension and uncertainty.
In September, the pope met Israeli president Yitzhak Herzog at the Vatican and raised the “tragic situation” in Gaza with him.
He chose mainly Muslim Turkey as his first overseas destination to mark the 1,700th anniversary of a landmark early church council there that produced the Nicene Creed, still used by most of the world’s Christians today.
Leo (70), landed in the capital, Ankara, shortly after midday to begin a crowded three-day itinerary in Turkey before heading on to Lebanon.
Speaking to journalists aboard the papal flight from Rome, the pope said he wanted to use his first overseas trip to urge peace for the world, and to encourage people of different backgrounds to live together in harmony.
“We hope to ... announce, transmit, proclaim how important peace is throughout the world,” he said. “And to invite all people to come together, to search for greater unity, greater harmony.”
“It’s a very important trip because we do not know much yet about Leo’s geopolitical views, and this is the first big chance for him to make them clear,” Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic who follows the Vatican, told Reuters.
Leo was elected in May by the world’s Catholic cardinals to succeed the late Pope Francis. A relative unknown on the world stage before his election, Leo spent decades as a missionary in Peru and only became a Vatican official in 2023.
Francis had been planning to visit Turkey and Lebanon but was unable to go because of his worsening health.
Francis, who led the global Church for 12 years, often said the conflicts across the globe reflected a new “piecemeal” world war and pleaded for the end of wars in Gaza, Ukraine, Iraq, Syria and across Africa, among others.
Pope Leo travelled on Thursday evening to Istanbul, home to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians.
Orthodox and Catholic Christians split in the East-West Schism of 1054, but have generally sought in recent decades to build closer ties.
Leo and Bartholomew travel on Friday to Iznik, 140km southeast of Istanbul and once called Nicaea, where early churchmen formulated the Nicene Creed, which lays out what remain the core beliefs of most Christians today.
The pope’s visit to Lebanon will start on Sunday.
