Pope Leo XIV started the second day of his trip to Turkey with a visit to Istanbul’s Blue Mosque on Saturday. Leo was following in the footsteps of his recent predecessors, who all made high-profile visits to the mosque in a gesture of respect to Turkey’s Muslim majority.

Leo paid tribute to the country's tiny Catholic community and also visited a group of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, who run a nursing home in Istanbul.

Pope Leo XIV marked the start of Advent on Saturday with an appeal for unity and peace, telling thousands gathered for Mass in Istanbul that Christians “journey as if on a bridge that connects earth to Heaven,

In Istanbul, Pope Leo XIV will meet the patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church to show amity between two of the world’s largest Christian groups.

The American pope emphasized a message of peace as he arrived in Ankara, welcomed on the tarmac by a military guard of honor and at the presidential palace by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Pope Leo XIV visited a historic mosque in Turkey during his first foreign trip — and although he customarily took off his shoes, the pontiff declined to join in prayer, according to reports. The Chicago-born leader of the Catholic Church attended Istanbul’s Blue Mosque on Saturday — with the Holy Father removing his footwear as a sign of respect to the iconic house of worship,

Christians are still the largest religious minority in the Middle East, the region where Jesus was born, lived and died, but the community is shrinking.

Pope Leo XIV urged unity and renewed hope in crisis-stricken Lebanon on Sunday, praising the country's "resilience" despite years of conflict and crises. On the second leg of his first foreign tour, following a stop in Turkey,