Pope Leo has embarked on his first foreign trip as Catholic leader with a visit to two Muslim-majority countries of Turkiye and Lebanon, where he is expected to make appeals for peace in the Middle East, ravaged by conflicts, and urge unity among long-divided Christian churches.

The pontiff, who has a crowded three-day itinerary in Turkiye starting on Thursday, before heading on to Lebanon, will be closely watched as he makes his first speeches overseas and visits sensitive cultural sites.

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Foreign travel has become a major part of the modern papacy, with popes attracting international attention as they lead events with crowds sometimes in the millions, give foreign policy speeches and conduct international diplomacy.

Leo, 70, was scheduled to depart with his entourage from Rome’s Fiumicino airport at about 06:40 GMT on Thursday, and will first visit the Turkish capital, Ankara, where he will meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and address political leaders.

The first pontiff from the United States has chosen Turkiye 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 was elected in May by the world’s cardinals in a conclave 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 Turkiye and Lebanon, but was unable to go because of his worsening health.

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After a brief visit in Ankara, Leo is also scheduled to fly on Thursday evening to Istanbul, which was also previously known as Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire.

[Translation: Pope Leo to depart for Turkiye for his first apostolic trip. He is seen arriving at Rome’s Fiumicino airport, from where he will take an Italian Airways flight to Ankara.]

In Istanbul, the city’s largest Catholic church at St Anthony Padua Parish, preparations are under way to welcome Leo, who is only the fifth pope to visit Turkiye, after Paul VI in 1967, John Paul II in 1979, Benedict XVI in 2006 and Francis in 2014.

Istanbul is the home of 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.

On Friday, Leo and Bartholomew will travel to Iznik, 140km (90 miles) 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.

In a departure from normal practice – popes usually speak Italian on foreign trips – Leo is expected to speak English in his speeches in Turkiye.

On Sunday, Leo will head to religiously diverse Lebanon, a nation that has been crushed by a devastating economic and political crisis since 2019 and which has been the target of repeated bombings by Israel in near-daily violations of a ceasefire with Hezbollah that was agreed one year ago to end the war.

Israel has killed more than 330 Lebanese in the last year since the truce was brokered.

On Sunday, Israel killed the Hezbollah chief of staff, Haytham Ali Tabatabai, in an air strike on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Monday that necessary security precautions were being taken to ensure the pope’s safety in Lebanon, but he would not comment on specifics.