2033 in Jerusalem

The Pope himself has acknowledged that a formal invitation has not yet been issued, implying that the success of such a celebration will depend largely on the willingness of Israel. In any case, his announcement summarises one of the main purposes of his pontificate: Christian unity.

The Pope does not dwell on the many discussions about the certainty of the date. It is traditional to set the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth when he was 33 years old, counting from the year 1 of the Christian Era, established by the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus in Rome in the 6th century, when he set the date of Christmas, that is, the birth of Christ, on 25 December of the year 753 of the founding of Rome, coinciding therefore with the year 1 of our calendar. 

The trip to Turkey and Lebanon by the Augustinian Pope Robert Francis Prevost Martínez has thus been extraordinarily rich in symbolism, and took place at a time of great upheaval throughout the Middle East and of questioning of spirituality, coinciding with the resigned Christian diaspora from a territory where Christians have been settled for almost the two thousand years referred to by the Pope.

Let us remember in this regard that Christians ceased to be persecuted after the Edict of Milan in 313, which was in fact an agreement between the Roman emperors of the East, Licinius, and the West, Constantine, granting all citizens of the empire the freedom to practise any religion, including Christianity. Barely ten years earlier, Diocletian had caused one of the greatest bloodbaths due to the Christians' refusal to worship the pagan gods, including the emperor himself. His immediate successor, Galerius, did not have time to replace persecution with tolerance, and it was Constantine who, after defeating Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312, definitively opened the doors for Christianity to begin its free preaching and universal expansion.

Not long after, in 325, the first council was held in Nicaea, now Iznik, about a hundred kilometres from present-day Istanbul, at which the essence of the creed, shared today by Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants, was adopted. The current Pope has therefore timed his first trip to coincide with the 1700th anniversary of that decisive meeting of bishops, which would give rise to what would become known as Christianity.

Two visits of significant political and religious importance are worth noting from his stopover in Turkey. The first, made shortly after his arrival in Ankara, was to the mausoleum of President Ataturk, which can be interpreted as a way of remembering that modern Turkey is based on a secular legal foundation. The second was to the emblematic Blue Mosque in Istanbul, where he did not attend any liturgical ceremony or pray. Vatican sources very close to the Pope point out that ‘Leo XIV thus draws a clear interreligious boundary: that mutual respect does not imply confusion of rites’. This is also a way of reminding the Turkish authorities, and therefore other Muslim countries, of the principle of freedom of conscience and respect for the practices of each religion. That freedom and respect in turn underpin the very possibility of establishing and celebrating interreligious dialogue. 

As François Mabille, a specialist in political and religious issues, pointed out in Le Monde, Leo XIV has acquired and demonstrated on this trip ‘the stature of an arbiter’, with a diplomatic style based more on international law than on religious affiliation. In this regard, the Lebanese leg of his trip has been particularly significant. ‘It has marked a milestone in the history of Lebanon,’ said the country's president, Joseph Aoun, who added in an interview with the daily newspaper L'Orient-Le Jour: ‘He has expressed a message of hope and peace.’ Indeed, the Pope, using extremely careful language, called for an end to attacks and hostilities: ‘Weapons kill, while negotiation, mediation and dialogue build. Let us all choose peace as our way forward.’

According to the Lebanese Constitution, drafted in 1926 and inspired by that of the Third French Republic, and renewed at the end of the French Protectorate, when Christians made up 50% of Lebanon's population, the country's president must be a Christian; the president of Parliament a Shiite Muslim; and the prime minister a Sunni Muslim. The alteration of this population division, in addition to the extremely complicated relations with Israel and Syria, led to both a long and bloody civil war (1975-1990) and the sudden entry onto the political and military scene of Hezbollah, which became one of Iran's main tentacles in its obsession with destroying Israel. A master of the language of sacred texts, Leo XIV made a veiled reference to Hezbollah's refusal to disarm when he called for ‘disarming hearts so that new approaches can enter that reject the mentality of revenge and violence, overcome political, social and religious divisions, and open a new chapter of reconciliation and peace’.

At a time when Christians, especially Maronites, have declined considerably in number in Lebanon, the Pope has supported them as ‘full citizens in these lands of the Levant,’ encouraging many Christians who remain there to reconsider their intentions to emigrate, leaving the country when there is so much suffering. The Pope implicitly extended these words of encouragement to the Christians of Syria, who now number only 20% of what they were before the outbreak of the civil war against Bashar Al-Assad's regime. They also extend to the fewer than 300,000 who remain in Iraq, after more than a million have gone into exile since the two Gulf Wars that ended Saddam Hussein's rule and caused enormous destruction in the country.