Why popes love Turkey
The country is a must-see destination for modern popes.
Pope Francis confirmed Thursday that he intends to visit Turkey in 2025.
Looking ahead to the 2025 Jubilee Year in a Nov. 28 address to members of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, he said: “During this Holy Year, we will also celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of the first great ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea. I am thinking of going there.”
The ecumenical council that adopted the Nicene Creed in A.D. 325 took place in Nicaea, the ancient city located in today’s İznik, in northwestern Turkey.
The prospect of a papal visit to Nicaea in 2025 first emerged in May, during a visit to Portugal by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians.
Bartholomew told journalists in Lisbon: “His Holiness Pope Francis wants to celebrate this very important anniversary together, and 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.”
In June, the pope received representatives of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, based in Istanbul. He thanked Bartholomew for inviting him to mark 1,700 years since the Nicene council at its original location.
“It is a trip that I truly wish to make,” he said.
It would be the fifth papal trip to the country officially known as the Republic of Türkiye. But why is a nation with a 99.8% Muslim population such a popular papal travel destination?
A ‘glorious Christian past’
The first papal visit to Turkey was in 1967. But in a sense, a pope set foot on Turkish soil before then.
Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, served as apostolic delegate to Turkey from 1934 to 1944. A statue stands outside of Istanbul’s Church of St. Anthony of Padua in honor of “the Good Pope,” who initiated Vatican Council II.
The modern era of globetrotting popes dawned in 1964, when Paul VI traveled to Jordan and Israel. Three years later, he touched down in Istanbul, at the start of a two-day visit that also included stops in Ephesus (known to Turkish people as Efes) and Smyrna (İzmir).
In Istanbul, Pope Paul visited the then Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I, whom he had met on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem in 1964. The two encounters were historic, ushering in a new age of dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
In Ephesus, the pope recalled the Apostle Paul’s visit to the city, described in Acts 19, and the Council of Ephesus, the third ecumenical council, held in A.D. 431. He noted that the council declared the Virgin Mary to be the Theotokos (God-bearer or Mother of God). The nearby House of the Virgin Mary is identified as the Virgin’s last home before her assumption into heaven.
At Smyrna, about an hour’s drive from Ephesus, the pope recalled the city’s “glorious Christian past.” He noted that its bishops included St. Polycarp, the Church Father who was martyred around A.D. 155.
Paul VI’s brief visit highlighted three elements that would draw other popes back to Turkey.
First, it’s the base of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, head of the largest Christian communion after Catholicism.
Second, Turkey is a biblical land, home to countless sites mentioned in the New Testament. The story of the Early Church and its councils passes through the country.
Paul VI tied these two attractions together in his address at St. John’s Cathedral is a cathedral in İzmir.
“It was in this region, at Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon [today’s Kadıköy], that the Church held its first great Councils and authoritatively defined the formulations of the faith that have remained unchanged to this day,” he said.
“East and West were then united in the profession of this blessed faith. And one of the motives for Our journey, as you know, was the desire to hasten the time when, for the happiness of all, this perfect union will be found again in the profession of the same Creed.”
The third attraction of Turkey, for Pope Paul, was its position at the crossroads of Christianity and Islam. He made sure to meet with the head of Istanbul’s Islamic community.
In a brief address, he cited the landmark Vatican Council II declaration Nostra aetate, which referred to Muslims as those who “adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men.”
In just two days, Paul VI established that a papal visit to Turkey could simultaneously advance Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, honor the Early Church, and strengthen Catholic-Muslim ties.
‘Precious to every Christian’
It’s not surprising that Paul VI’s successors were keen to retrace his steps.
In 1979, John Paul II made a two-day trip to the republic, visiting the capital, Ankara, as well as Istanbul, Ephesus, and İzmir.
In 2006, in the wake of his Regensburg lecture, Benedict XVI spent four days in Turkey, taking in Ankara, Ephesus, and Istanbul. Images of him walking shoeless in Istanbul’s Blue Mosque proved to be among the most memorable of his pontificate.
Pope Francis traveled to Turkey just a year after his election. His three-day visit in 2014 included a meeting with the then newly elected President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
In his address at the presidential palace in Ankara, Francis summed up Turkey’s enduring appeal for popes.
He said: “This land is precious to every Christian for being the birthplace [Tarsus] of St. Paul, who founded various Christian communities here, and for hosting the first seven Councils of the Church.”
“It is also renowned for the site near Ephesus which a venerable tradition holds to be the ‘Home of Mary,’ the place where the Mother of Jesus lived for some years. It is now a place of devotion for innumerable pilgrims from all over the world, not only for Christians, but also for Muslims.”
He added, with a diplomatic flourish, that Turkey’s merits included the present-day “hard work and generosity of its people, and its role in the concert of nations.”
And so, Turkey is not a surprising destination for a 2025 Jubilee Year papal pilgrimage, but an obvious one.
The ruins at Ephesus are spectacular, far more interesting than those in Athens, Greece. Turkey has such interesting Christian historic significance in Ephesus and beyond, and it has Pamukkale!!
Feasting with the Turkey related headlines right now