Pope’s jubilee visit to Turkey to advance political, ecumenical agenda

ROME – Should Pope Francis visit Turkey next year to commemorate a landmark anniversary for the Council of Nicaea, it will mark a key opportunity for him to make progress on several key priorities.

Not only will his presence for the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the first great ecumenical council, offer a boost for his ecumenical agenda, but it will also provide Francis an occasion to further move the needle on dialogue with Islam and on his geopolitical agenda for the region.

Though he had previously voiced his desire to visit Turkey for the commemoration of the Council of Nicaea, which took place in A.D. 325 in what is now İznik, in northwestern Turkey, the pope announced his desire to go this week.

Speaking to members of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission Nov. 28, he said that during the 2025 Jubilee of Hope, which he will inaugurate on Dec. 24, “we will also celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of the first great ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea. I am thinking of going there.”

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of most of the world’s Orthodox Christians and a good friend of Pope Francis, first hinted at a papal visit for the anniversary during a trip to Portugal in May, saying the pope “wants to celebrate this very important anniversary together.”

“He plans to come to our country to visit with us in Constantinople at the Patriarchate, and then proceed together to Nicaea to have some important celebrations on this anniversary,” he said.

Pope Francis in June spoke to a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate visiting the Vatican, thanking Bartholomew for the invitation to attend anniversary celebrations next year and saying, “It is a trip that I truly wish to make.”

Should Pope Francis go to Turkey in 2025, it would mark the fifth papal trip to the Republic of Turkey, and his second visit to the country after visiting previously in November 2014.

Since the beginning of his papacy, Francis has made ecumenism a priority, particularly in terms of relations with the Orthodox churches.

Ecumenism is expected to be a strong underlying theme of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope, with the pope in his Bull of Indiction for the jubilee, published earlier this year, making several references to the topic.

He pointed to next year’s anniversary for the Council of Nicaea, which among other things produced the Nicene Creed recited during Mass, affirmed the full divinity of Christ, and established a formula for determining the date of Easter.

“The Council Fathers chose to begin that Creed by using for the first time the expression ‘We believe,’ as a sign that all the Churches were in communion and that all Christians professed the same faith,” the pope said in the bull, and voiced hope that members of other Christian churches and communities would participate in the jubilee, and specifically noted the coincidence of the Nicaea commemorations with the jubilee year.

Francis, who throughout his papacy has spoken about the “ecumenism of blood,” referring to killing of Christians for their faith without considering which denomination they belong to, said these martyrs, “coming as they do from different Christian traditions, are also seeds of unity, expressions of the ecumenism of blood.”

“I greatly hope that the Jubilee will also include ecumenical celebrations as a way of highlighting the richness of the testimony of these martyrs,” he said.

Last July, the pope established a “Commission of the New Martyrs – Witnesses of the Faith” in the Vatican Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to develop list of Christians killed for their faith since the year 2000.

Again referring to the Council of Nicaea, the pope in the jubilee bull said it sought to preserve unity when it was “seriously threatened by the denial of the full divinity of Jesus Christ and hence his consubstantiality with the Father.”

“The Council of Nicaea was a milestone in the Church’s history. The celebration of its anniversary invites Christians to join in a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the Blessed Trinity and in particular to Jesus Christ,” he said.

He said the anniversary is also a “summons to all Churches and Ecclesial Communities to persevere on the path to visible unity and in the quest of fitting ways to respond fully to the prayer of Jesus ‘that they may all be one.’”

Francis also noted that in 2025, the Catholic and Orthodox celebrations of Easter will fall on the same day.

Most Christian traditions, including the Catholic Church, follow the Gregorian calendar, whereas some, including many Orthodox churches, continue to celebrate according to the old Julian calendar, meaning that for some Christians, Easter falls on different days each year.

However, in 2025, Easter will fall on the same day on the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

Pope Francis in the jubilee bull prayed that the coincidence would “serve as an appeal to all Christians, East and West, to take a decisive step forward toward unity around a common date for Easter. We do well to remind ourselves that many people, unaware of the controversies of the past, fail to understand how divisions in this regard can continue to exist.”

In addition to his ecumenical agenda, the pope’s potential visit to Turkey would offer him yet another chance to further cement ties with Islam, as 99.8 percent of Turkey is Muslim.

It would also be an opportunity for Francis to try to move the needle on important regional issues such as the status of Lebanon, and the war in Gaza.

In August, during the international summer Olympic games, Turkey’s President Recep Erdoğan pressured the pope to make a public statement condemning what he said was the “ridicule” of moral and religious values during the games, following debates over gender and backlash over a drag parody of the Last Supper in the opening ceremony.

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Erdoğan in a phone call urged the pope to make a public statement, which Francis ultimately did despite having refrained from doing so up to that point, and said in a subsequent social media post afterward that they had also discussed the war in Gaza and that he had suggested that Pope Francis hold talks with countries supporting Israel as part of diplomatic efforts to avoid escalation.

By issuing his condemnatory statement of the Olympics opening ceremony after his call with one of the world’s most influential state leaders, Francis made a display of unity with Muslims that will likely be solidified during his visit to Turkey, and he also positioned himself as potentially having a role in brokering peace in the Holy Land – a position the Vatican is keen to secure.

It is possible that during his visit to Turkey, then, after having tossed Erdoğan this bone for the Olympics, that Pope Francis will not only further cement his relationship with the Orthodox, but he will also occupy a stronger position when he meets with Islamic leaders and heads into his closed-door bilateral meetings.

His second visit to Turkey, then, could be a trifecta: Strengthening Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, advancing Catholic-Islamic ties, and promoting the cause of peace in what remains a deeply fractured region.

Follow Elise Ann Allen on X: @eliseannallen