Pope Leo XIV will pray at the site of the devastating 2020 Beirut port explosion during an upcoming trip to Lebanon and Turkey, the Vatican said Monday.<\/p>\n
The US-born pope is making his first overseas visit since becoming head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Argentina’s Pope Francis.<\/p>\n
The trip begins on November 27 in Turkey, focused around events marking the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, a milestone in Church history.<\/p>\n
Leo will also visit Istanbul’s Blue Mosque and meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and religious leaders, including the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians.<\/p>\n
On November 30, the pope will head to Lebanon for a visit that will include meetings with President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and local clergy, and prayers at the tomb of St. Charbel, the country’s patron saint.<\/p>\n
On December 2 he will hold a silent prayer at the site of the Beirut port explosion that killed more than 220 people.<\/p>\n
The disaster was one of the world’s largest non-nuclear blasts, ravaging swathes of the Lebanese capital and injuring more than 6,500 people.<\/p>\n
The last pope to visit Lebanon was Benedict XVI in 2012, while the last papal visit to Turkey was in 2014, when Francis travelled to Ankara and Istanbul.<\/p>\n
ar\/yad<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pope Leo XIV will pray at the site of the devastating 2020 Beirut port explosion during an upcoming trip to Lebanon and Turkey, the Vatican said Monday. The US-born pope is making his first overseas visit since becoming head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May, following the death of Argentina’s Pope Francis. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15717,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[330,717,127,119,775],"class_list":["post-15716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional","tag-lebanon","tag-pope","tag-religion","tag-turkey","tag-vatican"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15719,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15716\/revisions\/15719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}