Pope Leo XIV has visited Istanbul’s iconic Blue Mosque, marking his first appearance in a Muslim place of worship since assuming the papacy. The pontiff, however, declined an invitation from the Imam to pray inside the mosque a notable contrast to some previous papal gestures of interfaith symbolism.
In another unexpected shift, the American pope chose not to visit the nearby Hagia Sophia, unlike several of his predecessors. The sixth-century landmark, once a Byzantine basilica, later an Ottoman mosque, and long a museum, was reconverted into a mosque in 2020 a move widely condemned internationally and described by the late Pope Francis as “very saddening.”
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