By Joshua McElwee
ISTANBUL, Nov 29 (Reuters) – Pope Leo visited Istanbul’s famed Blue Mosque on Saturday, eradicating his footwear in an indication of respect however not showing to hope in his first go to as chief of the Catholic Church to a Muslim place of worship throughout his four-day go to to Turkey.
The primary U.S. pope bowed barely earlier than coming into the mosque and was led on a tour of the expansive complicated, in a position to maintain 10,000 worshippers, by its imam and the mufti of Istanbul.
Leo, strolling in white socks, smiled through the 20-minute go to and joked with one in all his guides, the mosque’s lead muezzin – the official who leads the every day calls to prayer.
LEO’S FIRST TRIP AS POPE BEING CLOSELY WATCHED
Because the group was leaving the constructing, the pope observed he was being guided out a door that’s normally an entryway, the place an indication says, “No exit.”
“It says no exit,” Leo mentioned, smiling. Askin Musa Tunca, the muezzin, responded: “You do not have to exit, you possibly can keep right here.”
The pope is visiting Turkey till Sunday on his first abroad journey as pontiff, which additionally features a go to to Lebanon.
Leo, a relative unknown on the world stage earlier than turning into pope in Could, is being carefully watched as he makes his first speeches abroad and interacts for the primary time with individuals exterior primarily Catholic Italy.
Tunca advised journalists after the mosque go to that he requested Leo through the tour if he wished to hope for a second, however the pope mentioned he most well-liked to only go to the mosque.
The Vatican mentioned in a press release that Leo undertook the tour “in a spirit of reflection and listening, with deep respect for the place and for the religion of those that collect there in prayer.”
The Blue Mosque is formally named for Sultan Ahmed I, chief of the Ottoman Empire from 1603 to 1617, who oversaw its development. It’s embellished with hundreds of blue ceramic tiles, the premise of its well-liked identify.
NO VISIT TO HAGIA SOPHIA
The Seventeenth-century construction is positioned throughout from the Hagia Sophia, a former Byzantine-era cathedral that Leo didn’t go to, in a break from previous papal journeys to Turkey. The Hagia Sophia, one in all Christianity’s most necessary locations of worship for a few millennium, was made a mosque for 500 years after the autumn of the Byzantine Empire.
It was transformed to a museum by Turkey’s secular republic greater than 70 years in the past however turned again right into a mosque by President Tayyip Erdogan in 2020.
The Vatican has not commented on Leo’s determination to not go to the Hagia Sophia. The late Pope Francis, who visited the construction throughout a 2014 journey to Turkey, mentioned in 2020 that he was “very pained” that it had been made a mosque once more.
Leo selected primarily Muslim Turkey as his first abroad vacation spot to mark the 1,700th anniversary of a landmark early Church council there that produced the Nicene Creed, nonetheless utilized by many of the world’s Christians at present.
At a ceremony on Friday to commemorate the Church council with Christian leaders from throughout the Center East, the pope condemned violence within the identify of faith and urged Christians to beat centuries of heated divisions.
Talking to senior clerics from international locations together with Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Israel, Leo referred to as it a scandal that the world’s 2.6 billion Christians weren’t extra united.
(Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Enhancing by Daren Butler and William Mallard)