Pope Leo warns of risk from ‘piecemeal’ world war in first overseas trip

A new world war is being fought “piecemeal” and is endangering the future of humanity, Pope Leo has warned, as he arrived in Turkey for his first foreign trip since becoming head of the Catholic church.

Speaking in Ankara, where he was welcomed on Thursday by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Leo said the world was experiencing “a heightened level of conflict on the global level, fuelled by prevailing strategies of economic and military power”.

Recalling a description of the world’s conflicts by his predecessor, the late Pope Francis, Leo said “a third world war is being fought piecemeal”.

“We must not give in to this,” he added. “The future of humanity is at stake.”

After Leo’s visit to Turkey – a country with a Muslim majority and home to an estimated 36,000 Catholics – he is due to travel to Lebanon on Sunday.

His arrival in Beirut is especially anticipated amid fears of a deepening conflict between Israel and Hezbollah after an Israeli strike earlier this weekon a neighbourhood in southern Beirut that killed four Hezbollah operatives and one of the group’s most senior military commanders.

Leo urged Turkish leaders to “embrace” the country’s role of being “a source of stability and rapprochement between peoples, in service of a just and lasting peace”, in reference to its growing role in conflict resolution efforts in Gaza, Ukraine and elsewhere.

Leo will meet Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians, for celebrations of the 1,700th anniversary of a major early church council in Nicaea, now İznik, which settled ideological disputes. His packed schedule also includes a visit to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and the celebration of a Catholic mass at the city’s Volkswagen Arena.

Francis, who died in April, had planned to visit both countries but was unable to because of ill health.

Leo is considered more of a moderate, low-key operator than the charismatic but often divisive Francis, and the choice of Turkey and Lebanon for his first overseas trip is highly strategic, while also presenting an opportunity for the pope to show the world his style and personality.

In recent weeks, Turkish media has buzzed with images of Vatican delegations touring the country, while in Beirut banners showing Pope Leo’s smiling face have lined the stone outer walls of churches in the Lebanese capital’s central Christian neighbourhoods.

“This is a trip where Leo will get to promote one of the central themes of his papacy, peace – and he’ll have two different audiences in mind,” said Christopher White, a Vatican expert and author of Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy.

“One will be world leaders: Turkey and Lebanon are strategic locations for him to double down on his efforts for peace in Ukraine and in the Middle East and with this being his first foreign outing, he’ll have the attention of world leaders closely following the trip.”

The second audience will be Christian leaders, as Leo attempts to unite the region’s long-divided churches. He would especially use the anniversary celebrations in Turkey “to remind believers what they share in common is far greater than their divisions”, White said.

Leo’s arrival in Lebanon on Sunday afternoon comes during a period in which many fear a potential return to the two-month Israeli bombing campaign that blanketed southern Lebanon and Beirut last year.

Karim Émile Bitar, a professor of international relations at the Saint Joseph University of Beirut, said Lebanon’s Christian community would be looking to the pope for a message of unity at a time when the country remained deeply polarised.

“This visit matters because the Vatican has historically been the main protector of Lebanese national unity and of Lebanese territorial integrity,” he said. “Most states have political or economic interests. The Vatican is one of the last moral authorities in the world that genuinely tries to promote peace and justice without any hidden agenda.”

Bitar said he believed Leo would “find the right words” during a visit that had “the potential to demonstrate that global powers like the Vatican can attempt to heal divisions in Lebanese society without pursuing their own political interests”.

He added: “Even though this visit is symbolic, and even though the Vatican has no army and no military influence, the simple fact that this is a man who speaks to people with genuine goodwill may matter more than the representatives of heavily militarised regional powers who are pushing Lebanon toward fragmentation.”

Leo will lead prayers in Beirut’s port, where a deadly blast destroyed swaths of the capital in 2020, and visit a psychiatric hospital run by the Catholic church.

The Turkey trip had been on the agenda for some time before Leo received the official invitation to Lebanon, where leaders hope the papal visit will bring world attention to a country also in deep economic strife.

“He immediately embraced it,” said Andrea Vreede, the Vatican correspondent for NOS, the Dutch public radio and TV network. “Going to Lebanon means being able to talk about peace in the Middle East, in a really war-torn country, and very near to Israel. I’m not sure if he’ll speak directly about Gaza but he will obviously use Lebanon as a platform for peace.”

The Lebanese, meanwhile, “want some hope from him”, added Vreede. “It’s a country that is also in huge economic crisis … they see this visit as basically the only miraculous thing that can help them.”

After Francis in 2021 made the high-risk trip to Iraq, where he visited Mosul, the northern city devastated by Islamic State militants, Leo has faced some criticism for not visiting Christian communities in southern Lebanon. “He won’t go there – it’s too unsafe,” said Vreede.

Meanwhile, Christians in other countries are hoping he will visit them, too. Inside the Maronite church in Bab Touma, a historically Christian neighbourhood in the Syrian capital of Damascus, Fahed Dahta said he was overjoyed at the visit to the region. “This visit is enormously important to people. We need peace in the Middle East. I want peace for the entire region, and an end to all of these wars: Israel-Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, Israel and Syria,” he said. “He represents peace: he’s the pope!”

[Source: The Guardian]