ANKARA — Seeking to unify a recently decriminalized faith, Constantine the Great called a summit of early Christians in the ancient Anatolian city of Nicaea. The then-nascent religion’s theologians were clashing, over no issue more than the origins of Jesus Christ.
On his first international trip as pontiff, Pope Leo XIV arrived Thursday in Turkey — site of the ancient summit — to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. On Friday, joined by Eastern Orthodox leaders, diplomats and other faith leaders, he will hark back to an era before the splintering of Christianity at a prayer service near the submerged archaeological site of the Basilica of St. Neophytos in Iznik, formerly Nicaea.
But he will also be implicitly recognizing a legacy of internal dispute within his own church since the days of the 12 apostles, doing so as observers see the first U.S.-born pontiff confronting a host of challenges as a new pope whose job it is to define what it means to be a Christian today.
Nicaea-era questions over the divine nature of Jesus may be settled in the faith, but Leo is grappling with an overriding task: Bringing “unity” to a polarized church in an era of divisive politics that has stirred bitter debates over migration, inequality, climate change and a host other culture war issues.
Part of his challenge is more firmly establishing who he will be as pope — with fresh glimpses emerging on this first papal trip. The Chicago native is positioning himself early as the pope of unity, the pope of peace.
On board the papal flight, he thanked journalists for their work, for sharing “truth,” and offered Thanksgiving greetings to Americans. He received from them a host of gifts, including pumpkin and pecan pies, and — for a Chicago boy and fan — a vintage White Sox baseball bat used by the great Nelly Fox.
He called his first trip abroad as pope a mission of unity and peace, inviting “all people to come together to search for greater unity, greater harmony and to look for ways where all men and women can truly be brothers and sisters in spite of differences, in spite of different religions, in spite of different beliefs.”
His messaging thus far has shown him to be remarkably on point with his predecessor — Pope Francis, whose papacy brought convulsions to a church of 1.4 billion Catholics. Leo is displaying a style that is more circumspect and reserved. But he has echoed Francis’s emphasis on migrant rights and the poor, criticized capitalism, called out religious hypocrisy and run with the torch of radical climate action.
“Leo is continuing what Pope Francis had started and done,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, 80, a longtime Vatican watcher. “Their styles are very different. Pope Francis was much more spontaneous. But I think people like Leo, his personality, I would even say his reticence, even though he is not the bigger-than-life personality that Pope Francis was.”
Drawing an analogy with the Nicaea council, Leo ahead of his trip asked Catholics to examine their “conscience.”
“Following Jesus Christ is not a wide and comfortable path,” he said. He asked Catholics to ask themselves, “Am I willing to share the goods of the earth, which belong to everyone, in a just and equitable manner? How do I treat creation, the work of his hands? Do I exploit and destroy it, or do I use it with reverence and gratitude, caring for and cultivating it as the common home of humanity?”
Those questions do not sit well with everyone.
The echoes of Francis could widen rather than narrow some breaches in a church, where the most conservative Catholics, particularly in the United States, chaffed at the last pope. While articulating a pointed desire to avoid political division, Leo has nevertheless weighed in when asked — taking the Trump administration, for instance, to task for attacking ships off the Venezuelan coast and what he called the “inhuman” treatment of migrants.
John Yep, president of the pro-Trump group Catholics for Catholics, had nothing but praise for Leo. But he echoed the views of some conservative Catholics who have taken note the church’s focus on migrants amid the crackdown in the United States.
“As Catholic Americans, when you say we’re divided on this, you see, [it’s] sometimes yes, sometimes no, because the majority of Catholics have voted for President [Donald] Trump, and gave him a mandate … for deportations,” he said.
Bigger challenges for the faith and Leo loom ahead.
More than a millennium and half later, theological divisions persist, including over the nature of Mary, that have become more amplified in the digital age. Citing cultish, online groups dedicated to the mother of God, the Vatican this month, in a document co-signed by Leo, stated that Mary should not be seen as a “co-redeemer,” instructing Catholics not to view her as aiding her son in what the faith teaches as the salvation of humanity.
That decision did not sit with some traditionalists, who viewed the document as upending Marian thought.
Bishop Athanasius Schneider, a conservative Catholic cleric in Kazakhstan, said that the notion that Mary should never be viewed as a co-redeemer “constitutes an objective rupture” with past church teaching. While viewing the Madonna’s role as “subordinate,” he said, “she was a co-redeemer in the sense of the motherly cooperation with Christ.”
More than anything, however, church disputes now center on the culture wars, on how to act, serve and worship in Jesus’ name and how or whether a church of 1.4 billion Catholics should evolve.
Leo has already showed the resistance of past popes toward female ordination — taking a traditional position even as calls within the church grow louder for change. He will be asked to further clarify evolving views of gender and family, whether it be through ministry to same-sex couples, or an increasingly vocal push by clerics in Africa for a more accepting Vatican line on polygamy.
“Polygamy, adultery, or polyamory are based on the illusion that the intensity of the relationship can be found in the succession of faces,” the Vatican felt compelled to spell out in a new document celebrating monogamy published this week and also co-signed by Leo. “As the myth of Don Juan illustrates, the number dissolves the name: it disperses the unity of the amorous impulse.”
The Nicaea event — initially planned under Francis — will be a display of Christian bonhomie, on the heels of accords, joint documents and gestures between Francis and counterparts from Eastern Orthodox, Anglicanism and other dominations. Yet even as they cooperate on the lofty matters such as the rise of artificial intelligence, the faiths remain strategic competitors on the ground.
The Eastern Orthodox Church, though still extremely small, is making inroads in Leo’s homeland of the United States, in part by reinforcing masculine stereotypes in conservative young men. At time when the Anglican Church is now being led by a woman, more traditional Catholicism is making new gains in old spiritual battlegrounds like Britain, especially among a growing crop of churchgoing millennials and Gen Zers.
Even within Catholicism, a new generation of young priests and seminarians are decidedly more conservative than their elders. Leo faces increasing pushback, for instance, against a Francis-era edict curbing sayings of the old Latin Mass,a touchstone for traditionalists. Younger priests, many of them barred from saying such services, have especially pressed for change.
Other issues are confronting the church are seen as heretical to Catholic teaching even as they take root in parts of the church, including the growing popularity of prosperity gospel, a notion long popular in the Evangelical churches that have poached Catholics for decades in Latin America and elsewhere, and which proffers the theory that God offers financial gain to the faithful. Calls for a more nuanced view of gender identity have additionally challenged established church doctrine.
“We have more cultural issues that are dividing the church, but on the other hand, I think we have a reemerging problem with heresies,” said Massimo Faggioli, professor in ecclesiology at Trinity College Dublin.
In Germany, Leo faces a Catholic church that has bordered on insurrection as it loses patience for liberal reform, even as conservative dioceses in Africa have rebelled over gestures the church has offered, such as 2023 ruling explicitly allowing priests to conduct short blessings of individuals in same-sex partnerships.
“As at Nicaea, [unity] will only be possible through a patient, long and sometimes difficult journey of mutual listening and acceptance,” Leo wrote in his pre-trip message. “It is a theological challenge and, even more so, a spiritual challenge, which requires repentance and conversion on the part of all.”
Dissent in the Catholic Church is as old as the faith — and not always pretty.
For the Council of Nicaea, Constantine, a pagan who converted on his deathbed, summoned senior clergy to address a between dispute with Arius, an early Christian elder who argued that Jesus was not coeternal with God the father, but rather, created by him.
Intense, even violent debate ensued, with Arius’s teachings labeled blasphemous and the church agreeing on what would become the foundation of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Arius was exiled, then allowed back into the fold, and the bishops who opposed him exiled. Some have suggested he may have been poisoned at death, though church scholars refute that.
“At least we don’t kill each other anymore,” Reese said.
Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.
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