Catholic World News

Leo XIV, Ecumenical Patriarch sign joint declaration; Pontiff calls for 2033 gathering in Jerusalem

November 30, 2025

Pope Leo XIV and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who holds a primacy of honor among the Orthodox churches, signed a joint declaration yesterday, the third day of the first international trip of Pope Leo’s pontificate.

The Pope’s six-day apostolic journey, which began November 27, is taking him to Turkey (Türkiye) and Lebanon. The first event of his third day in Turkey (yesterday) was a visit to the Blue Mosque, which Pope Leo toured, but in which he did not pray publicly. The Reuters news agency reported:

The Vatican appeared surprised that Leo had not stopped to pray during the visit and that he had not been welcomed to the mosque by the head of Turkey’s state-run religious organisation, known as the diyanet, as had been planned. About three hours after the visit, the Vatican released a press statement saying both the prayer and the welcome had occurred, although they had not. The Vatican press office said the release had been sent in error.

Later in the morning, Pope Leo went to Mor Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Church, where he prayed and met privately with the nation’s Christian leaders for over two hours (video). The church, dedicated in 2023, is the sole church built in Turkey since the founding of the Turkish republic in 1923.

Vatican News, the news agency of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, reported that the Pope emphasized “the primacy of the evangelization and the proclamation of the ‘kerygma’—the proclamation of the Good News—while recalling that division among Christians is an obstacle to the witness they bear.”

The report continued:

He invited everyone to journey together on the spiritual path leading to the Jubilee of Redemption—the 2,000th anniversary of Jesus’ Passion, Death, and Resurrection—in 2033, with a view to returning to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, where Jesus washed the feet of His disciples at the Last Supper and later, at Pentecost, sent the Holy Spirit upon them.

Joint Declaration

In the afternoon, following lunch at the apostolic delegation, Pope Leo XIV traveled to St. George’s Cathedral, the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, where he joined in the Doxology (video).

Greeting the Pontiff, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said:

The Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Great Church of Christ, welcomes you with profound joy and jubilation on this day, in the same spirit of fraternal love with which it welcomed your illustrious predecessors, the Popes of venerable memory Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. Each of them contributed greatly, each in his own way, with his own charism, to the rapprochement of our sister Churches through the dialogue of love and truth ...

We believe this first journey will be a blessing on his [Pope Leo’s] papacy, as he chose to begin it with this pilgrimage to Nicaea. In the Orthodox Christian liturgical tradition, before a cleric participates in the sacred mystery of the Divine Eucharist, he reads a prayer known as “Kairos” and venerates the icons of Christ and revered saints as a way to receive their blessing to serve the Liturgy. Therefore, in our tradition, we would say that he has come to draw “Kairos,” strength, and fortitude, from the sacred site of Nicaea as he begins his papal ministry, characterized by a desire to serve the Lord’s call to Christian unity, which we now discover is more necessary than ever.

“Upon entering this church, I experienced great emotion, for I am mindful that I am following in the footsteps of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis,” Pope Leo said in his own brief remarks

“Yesterday, and again this morning, we experienced extraordinary moments of grace as we commemorated, together with our brothers and sisters in faith, the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea,” he continued. “By remembering that highly significant event, and inspired by the prayer of Jesus that all his disciples may be one (cf. Jn 17:21), we are encouraged in our commitment to seek the restoration of full communion among all Christians, a task that we undertake with God’s help.”

At the conclusion of the Doxology, the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch went to the Patriarchal Palace, where they signed their joint declaration, in which they pledged to work for the restoration of full communion and toward a common date for the celebration of Easter.

“Following the example of our venerable predecessors, and heeding the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, we continue to walk with firm determination on the path of dialogue, in love and truth (cf. Eph 4:15), towards the hoped-for restoration of full communion between our sister Churches,” they declared. “Aware that Christian unity is not merely the result of human efforts, but a gift that comes from on high, we invite all the members of our Churches—clergy, monastics, consecrated persons, and the lay faithful—earnestly to seek the fulfilment of the prayer that Jesus Christ addressed to the Father: ‘that they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you... so that the world may believe’ (Jn 17:21).”

The Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch referred to the faith expressed in the Nicene Creed as

the saving faith in the person of the Son of God, true God from true God, homoousios with the Father, who for us and our salvation was incarnate and dwelt among us, was crucified, died and was buried, arose on the third day, ascended into heaven, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. Through the coming of the Son of God, we are initiated into the mystery of the Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and are invited to become, in and through the person of Christ, children of the Father and co-heirs with Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Endowed with this common confession, we can face our shared challenges in bearing witness to the faith expressed at Nicaea with mutual respect, and work together towards concrete solutions with genuine hope. We are convinced that the commemoration of this significant anniversary [the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea] can inspire new and courageous steps on the path towards unity.

“The goal of Christian unity includes the objective of contributing in a fundamental and life-giving manner to peace among all peoples,” they added. “Together we fervently raise our voices in invoking God’s gift of peace upon our world. Tragically, in many regions of our world, conflict and violence continue to destroy the lives of so many. We appeal to those who have civil and political responsibilities to do everything possible to ensure that the tragedy of war ceases immediately, and we ask all people of good will to support our entreaty.”

The joint statement concluded:

While we are deeply alarmed by the current international situation, we do not lose hope. God will not abandon humanity. The Father sent his Only-Begotten Son to save us, and the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, bestowed upon us the Holy Spirit, to make us sharers in his divine life, preserving and protecting the sacredness of the human person. By the Holy Spirit we know and experience that God is with us.

For this reason, in our prayer we entrust to God every human being, especially those in need, those who experience hunger, loneliness or illness. We invoke upon each member of the human family every grace and blessing so that “their hearts may be encouraged, as they are knit together in love, to have all the riches of assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery,” who is our Lord Jesus Christ (Col 2:2).

Saturday evening Mass

Following the signing of the joint declaration, Pope Leo traveled to Istanbul’s Volkswagen Arena, where he was the principal celebrant of the Mass of the First Sunday of Advent (video).

In his homily, the Pope reflected on two images from the first reading (Isaiah 2:1-5): “the mountain established as the highest of the mountains” and “a world in which peace reigns.”

Mount Zion’s “beauty is a beacon of light for men and women from every place, and serves as a reminder that the joy of goodness is contagious,” Pope Leo preached. “We find here an invitation to renew the power of our own witness of faith ... Dear friends, if we truly want to help the people we meet, let us ‘keep watch’ over ourselves, as the Gospel recommends (cf. Mt 24:42), by cultivating our faith with prayer with the sacraments, living it consistently in charity, and casting off—as Saint Paul tells us in the second reading—the works of darkness and putting on the armor of light (cf. Rom 13:12).”

Commenting on Isaiah’s image of a peaceful world, the Pope spoke of “the importance of our common efforts to build bridges of unity on three levels: within the community, in ecumenical relations with members of other Christian denominations, and in our encounters with brothers and sisters belonging to other religions. Taking care of these three bonds, strengthening and expanding them in every way possible, is part of our vocation to be a city set on a hill (cf. Mt 5:14-16).”

He concluded:

Dear friends, let us make these values our resolutions for the season of Advent and even more so for our personal and communal life. We journey as if on a bridge that connects earth to Heaven, a bridge that the Lord has built for us. Let us always keep our eyes fixed on both shores, so that we may love God and our brothers and sisters with all our hearts in order to journey together and find ourselves one day united in the house of the Father.

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Leo XIV, Ecumenical Patriarch sign joint declaration; Pontiff calls for 2033 gathering in Jerusalem

First Sunday of Advent

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