“We are all invited to overcome the scandal of the divisions that unfortunately still exist [among Christians] and to nurture the desire for unity for which the Lord Jesus prayed and gave his life,” Pope Leo XIV told the leaders of the Christian churches in his speech at an ecumenical prayer service in Turkey on Nov. 28, commemorating the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. 

Leo, who has made peace and unity priorities of his pontificate, emphasized that “the more we are reconciled, the more we Christians can bear credible witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is a proclamation of hope for all” and, in the words of Pope Francis, “a message of peace and universal fraternity that transcends the boundaries of our communities and nations.”

Speaking in English, he told the Christian leaders present and his global ecumenical audience, “Today, the whole of humanity afflicted by violence and conflict is crying out for reconciliation. The desire for full communion among all believers in Jesus Christ is always accompanied by the search for fraternity among all human beings.”

“In the Nicene Creed,” he said, “we profess our faith ‘in one God, the Father.’ Yet, it would not be possible to invoke God as Father if we refused to recognize as brothers and sisters all other men and women, who are created in the image of God.”

“There is a universal fraternity of men and women regardless of ethnicity, nationality, religion or personal perspectives,” Pope Leo said. “Religions, by their very nature, are repositories of this truth and should encourage individuals, groups and peoples to recognize this and put it into practice,” he said.

He emphasized, furthermore, “we must strongly reject the use of religion for justifying war, violence, or any form of fundamentalism or fanaticism. Instead, the paths to follow are those of fraternal encounter, dialogue and cooperation.”

Pope Leo delivered his speech standing next to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew—the first among equals among the leaders of the Orthodox churches— and the 26 leaders of other Christian churches, at the site of ruins of the ancient Basilica of Saint Neophyte. The basilica, named for an early Christian martyr, was built after the Council of Nicaea, in the 4th century. It was later destroyed by an earthquake then submerged by the waters of a lake; its ruins were only discovered in 2014.

The sun shone brightly as Leo XIV arrived from Istanbul on a white helicopter that flew over the lake before landing. He was welcomed on arrival by Patriarch Bartholomew who organized this event.

When Pope Francis had originally accepted the invitation, it had been hoped that the leaders of most of the Christian churches would attend. Serious tensions, however, developed between the Patriarchates of Moscow and Constantinople that resulted in a reduced presence of Christian leaders today. 

The date for the event was scheduled around the anniversary of the opening of the council, May 20. However, Francis died on April 21, and Leo, his successor, agreed to come on this day instead, in order to be present for the feast of St. Andrew, the brother of St. Peter, which the Orthodox Patriarchate celebrates on Nov. 30.

Today’s gathering took place under quite extraordinary security measures at the lakeside archeological excavations of the ancient basilica. Apart from the 28 church leaders and the clerics or laity accompanying them, the only other people present were hundreds of Turkish security personnel and the Vatican press corps traveling with the pope, as well as the Turkish media. No one else was allowed near the event. The Muslim call to prayer sounded from the nearby mosque in the small town of Iznik (originally called Nicaea), just as the procession of church leaders moved towards the lakeside platform.

The commemorative ceremony consisted of singing, prayers, speeches by the ecumenical patriarch and the pope, the recital of the Nicene Creed and the Our Father.

Patriarch Bartholomew, 85, spoke first, in English. He began by thanking Pope Leo and the other Christians leaders for accepting his invitation to honor together “the memory and legacy of the First Ecumenical Council held here, at Nicaea.” He told them, “We are gathered here not simply to remember the past. We are here to bear living witness to the same faith expressed by the Fathers of Nicaea. We return to this wellspring of the Christian faith in order to move forward.”

In Nicaea, he said, “history bore witness to eternity, to the fact that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is true God of true God, consubstantial with the Father.”  Moreover, he said, “the Nicene Creed acts like a seed for the whole of our Christian existence. It is a symbol not of a bare minimum; it is a symbol of the whole.” With this faith “burning in our hearts,” Patriarch Bartholomew said, “let us run the course of Christian unity and  let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Trinity consubstantial and undivided.”

In his own speech, Pope Leo began by saying, “the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea is a precious opportunity to ask ourselves who Jesus Christ is in the lives of men and women today, and who he is for each one of us personally.”

He said, “this question is important at a period of history marked by many tragic signs in which people are subjected to countless threats to their very dignity.” He called it “especially important for Christians, who risk reducing Jesus Christ to a kind of charismatic leader or superman, a misrepresentation that ultimately leads to sadness and confusion,” repeating what he told the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel in his first Mass as pope on May 9.

He recalled one of the questions that the Council of Nicaea was called to address—that of Christ’s divine and human natures—and said, “by denying the divinity of Christ, Arius reduced him to a mere intermediary between God and humanity, ignoring the reality of the Incarnation such that the divine and the human remained irremediably separated. But if God did not become man, how can mortal creatures participate in his immortal life?”

He emphasized that “what was at stake at Nicaea, and is at stake today, is our faith in the God who, in Jesus Christ, became like us to make us ‘partakers of the divine nature’.”

He underlined that “this Christological confession of faith” that was declared at Nicaea in 325 “is of fundamental importance in the journey that Christians are making towards full communion. For it is shared by all Christian Churches and Communities throughout the world, including those which, for various reasons, do not use the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in their liturgies.”

Indeed, he said, “faith ‘in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages… consubstantial with the Father’ is a profound bond already uniting all Christians.” He added, “In this sense, in the ecumenical context we can also say—to quote Saint Augustine—that, ‘although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one’.”  These last words, “in the one Christ we are one,” are the official motto of Pope Leo.

“Consequently,” Pope Leo said, “with an awareness that we are already linked by such a profound bond, we can continue our journey of ever deeper adherence to the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in mutual love and dialogue.”

He concluded by thanking the ecumenical patriarch for his “great wisdom and foresight” in deciding to commemorate together the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in the very place where it was held. He also thanked the other Christians leaders present for accepting the patriarch’s invitation and prayed that God may hear their prayers “and grant that this important anniversary may bear the abundant fruits of reconciliation, unity and peace.”

The commemoration of Nicaea concluded the second day of Pope Leo’s visit to Turkey, which began this Friday when he visited the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit to meet and talk with the bishops, clergy, religious and pastoral workers in this country.

There, he gave an inspiring homily, delivered with emotion, as he spoke of his “great joy” of visiting this “holy land.” He recalled the rich history of Christianity in this land “where the story of the people of Israel meets the birth of Christianity, where the Old and New Testaments embrace and where the pages of numerous Councils were written,” of which the council commemorated today was the first of eight. The council was, he said quoting Pope Francis, “a “milestone in the history of the Church but also of humanity as a whole.”