6+ hour, 50+ min ago (1046+ words) Nicole Winfield And Abby Sewell ISTANBUL " Pope Leo XIV wrapped up his visit to Turkey on Sunday before heading to Lebanon, where he hoped to bring a message of hope to its long-suffering people and bolster a crucial Christian community in the Middle East. Leo had two key appointments in Istanbul before flying to Beirut: a prayer at the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral and a divine liturgy with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, whose invitation to commemorate an important Christian anniversary was the impetus for Leo's visit. Leo processed into the Armenian cathedral in a cloud of incense as a male choir chanted. He praised the "courageous Christian witness of the Armenian people throughout history, often amid tragic circumstances." It was a reference to the World War I-era slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. Pope Francis…...

22+ hour, 57+ min ago (811+ words) ISTANBUL " Pope Leo XIV visited Istanbul's Blue Mosque on Saturday but didn't stop to pray, as he opened an intense day of meetings and liturgies with Turkey's religious leaders and a Mass for the country's tiny Catholic community. The head of Turkey's Diyanet religious affairs directorate showed Leo the soaring tiled domes of the 17th-century mosque and the Arabic inscriptions on its columns, as Leo nodded in understanding. The Vatican had said Leo would observe a "brief minute of silent prayer" there, but it didn't appear that he had. The imam of the mosque, Asgin Tunca, said he had invited Leo to pray, since the mosque was "Allah's house," but the pope declined. Speaking to reporters after the visit, Tunca said he had told the pope: "It's not my house, not your house, (it's the) house of Allah," he said....

1+ day, 22+ hour ago (850+ words) Pope Leo XIV marks a high point of his his first foreign trip to Turkey with a pilgrimage to the site where early Christian church leaders met 1,700 years ago under the auspices of the Roman Emperor Constantine to host the Council of Nicaea. Leo will pray with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, at the site of the 325 AD gathering, now the town of Iznik, and sign a joint declaration in a show of Christian unity. The unprecedented gathering of at least 250 bishops from around the Roman Empire during the first council established the first version of the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith that millions of Christians still recite each Sunday. Eastern and Western churches were united until the Great Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope. The…...

1+ day, 22+ hour ago (531+ words) Nicole Winfield And Andrew Wilks ISTANBUL " Pope Leo XIV encouraged Turkey's tiny Catholic community to find strength in its small size as he embarked on the key day of his first trip that is meant to bolster Christians and pursue their centuries-old quest for unity. Shouts of "Papa Leo" and "Viva il Papa" (Long Live the pope) erupted along with cheering and clapping inside and outside Istanbul's Cathedral of the Holy Spirit as Leo arrived to begin his first full day in Turkey. Leo presided over a prayer with Turkey's Catholic clergy and nuns before taking part in the key reason for his visit, the first of his pontificate. He will commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of one of the most important moments in Christianity: the 325 AD gathering of bishops that produced the Nicaean Creed, a statement of faith that millions of…...

4+ day, 5+ hour ago (1224+ words) VATICAN CITY " Pope Leo XIV is embarking on his first foreign trip, a pilgrimage to Turkey and Lebanon that would be delicate under any circumstances but is even more fraught given Mideast tensions and the media glare that will document history's first American pope on the road. Leo is fulfilling a trip Pope Francis planned to make, to mark an important anniversary with the Orthodox church in Turkey. In Lebanon, he'll try to boost a long-suffering Christian community as well as Lebanese of all faiths who are still demanding justice over the 2020 Beirut port blast. Leo, who spent 12 years as superior of his Augustinian religious order and two decades as a missionary in Peru, says he loves to travel. And in recent weeks, he has shown both diplomatic and linguistic dexterity in answering questions on the fly from reporters. The…...

4+ day, 22+ hour ago (1064+ words) BOSTON " With peak holiday travel starting just after the government shutdown's flight restrictions, hope for a moment of peace at an airport can feel like a wing and a prayer. But quiet and worship are just what airport chapels have provided for decades to travelers and to the airport workers that many were originally designed for. "I love seeing travel bags and workers' outfits. It gives hope that you're ministering to a need," said the Rev. Brian Daley, one of the priests at Our Lady of the Airways at Boston's Logan International Airport. Built in the 1950s so that airport employees could attend Mass right in their sprawling workplace, it's widely considered the first airport chapel in the United States. It's also among the last to still function as a Catholic church instead of an interfaith space " though Muslim prayer rugs…...

5+ day, 3+ min ago (544+ words) VATICAN CITY " The Vatican on Tuesday doubled down on the value of monogamous marriage between a man and woman, responding to concerns raised by African bishops about the practice of polygamy in their flocks. The document from the Vatican's doctrine office said the Catholic Church had a well-documented position upholding the indissolubility of marriage as a lifelong union between spouses. But it said the church's position on the unique and exclusive nature of a monogamous marriage was less well known. In recent years at Vatican meetings of bishops and in visits by groups of bishops, African delegates have regularly complained that polygamy is widely practiced among their flocks and asked the Vatican for guidance. "One Flesh: In Praise of Monogamy" provides them with a doctrinal document tracing the way marriage has been treated in the Bible, poetry, Christian theology and…...

5+ day, 16+ hour ago (275+ words) BANGKOK " A woman in Thailand shocked temple staff when she started moving in her coffin after being brought in for cremation. Wat Rat Prakhong Tham, a Buddhist temple in the province of Nonthaburi on the outskirts of Bangkok, posted a video on its Facebook page, showing a woman lying in a white coffin in the back of a pickup truck, slightly moving her arms and head, leaving temple staff bewildered. He said they heard a faint knock coming from the coffin. "I was a bit surprised, so I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled," he said. "I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time." According to Pairat, the brother said his sister had been bedridden for about two years, when…...

6+ day, 44+ min ago (837+ words) Suzan Fraser And Ayse Wieting HEYBELIADA " As Pope Leo XIV prepares to embark on his first trip abroad with a visit to Turkey to mark a key event that shaped the foundations of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, there has been a surge of renewed optimism over the possible reopening of a Greek Orthodox religious seminary that has been closed since 1971. The Halki Theological School has become a symbol of Orthodox heritage and a focal point in the push for religious freedoms in Turkey. Located on Heybeliada Island, off the coast of Istanbul, the seminary once trained generations of Greek Orthodox patriarchs and clergy. They include Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of some 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide. Turkey closed the school under laws restricting private higher education, and despite repeated appeals from international religious leaders and human rights advocates…...

6+ day, 23+ hour ago (987+ words) NABUMALI " Among the most sensitive family disputes Moses Kutoi mediates are those involving upset men questioning why some of their children don't resemble them. For the Ugandan clan leader attuned to the wisdom of his ancestors, the matter is taboo, never to be discussed with others. Yet Kutoi feels compelled to intervene in the hope of saving marriages that sometimes turn violent and are on the verge of breaking. "Even me, I don't resemble my father," the clan leader recently told one disbelieving man he was helping. Paternity has become a key test of faith in this east African country as DNA testing becomes more widely available, fueled in part by published reports of well-known Ugandans who eventually discovered they were not the biological fathers of some of their children. The matter has become so heated that clerics and traditional…...