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Pope Leo XIV traveled to join Orthodox patriarchs in commemorating an important moment in Christian history, gathering at the site in Turkey of an unprecedented A.D. 325 meeting of bishops to pray that Christians might once again be reunited.
Leo, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and other Christian leaders were meeting on the shores of Lake Iznik, the site of the Council of Nicaea that produced a creed, or statement of faith, that is still recited by millions of Christians today.
Leo flew by helicopter to Iznik from Istanbul to take part in an ecumenical prayer to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicaea meeting, the highlight of his visit to Turkey. He arrived just after the Muslim call to prayer rang out from a nearby mosque.
What to know:
Leo’s Friday schedule: Before traveling to Iznik, he began the second day of his tour meeting bishops and other church officials at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, a 19th-century Baroque church in Istanbul’s Sisli district. He then visited a nearby nursing home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order founded in France in the 1840s to care for poverty-stricken older people.The significance of the Nicaean Creed: The AD 325 gathering of bishops that produced the Nicaean Creed happened at a time when the Eastern and Western churches were still united. They split in the Great Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope. But even today, Catholic, Orthodox and most historic Protestant groups accept the Nicaean Creed, making it a point of agreement and the most widely accepted creed in Christendom.The trip’s itinerary: Leo arrived first in Ankara, where he met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and delivered a speech to the country’s diplomatic corps. He is now in Istanbul for three days of ecumenical and interfaith meetings, which will be followed by the Lebanese leg of his trip.