Pope Leo XIV decided not to pray during his visit to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, breaking the tradition begun by Benedict The Supreme Pontiff He respectfully declined … Muezzin’s suggestion He continued the visit cordially. The decision can be linked to the desire not to anger Turkish nationalists, who criticized the popes praying in this place.
“They explained to me that the pope would pray here, and I said there was no problem,” the muezzin of Istanbul’s Blue Mosque, who accompanied the Pope during his 15-minute visit to the country’s most important mosque, explained to ABC. “But when I showed it to him and told him that it is the house of God, if you want you can pray, I told him if you want you can have a moment of worship,” and he said to me: “It’s okay, let’s continue visiting the mosque.”He added. The muezzin did not criticize the Pope’s decision, and said, “We are very happy with his visit to us, because it is important for us to be together and get to know each other.”
Although prayer was expected in the protocol, the fact is that before the trip began, the Vatican spokesman made it clear that we would have to wait and see what would happen during the visit. Finally, the Holy See press room explained that “the Pope lived the visit to the mosque in silence, in the spirit of remembering and listening, with… Deep respect for place and faith Of those gathered there to pray.”
Pope Leo’s visit to Turkey’s most important mosque, the stunning Blue Mosque in Istanbul, is his most important gesture to normalize relations between Muslims and Christians, as he is the fourth Pope in a row to visit. Unlike his predecessors, he did not enter the ancient Hagia Sophia, because it is the year 2020 Erdogan turned it into a mosque Since then the curtains hide its ancient mosaics depicting the Virgin Mary, Jesus and the saints.
The stunning Blue Mosque, completed in 1617, is officially called the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, and like the great Ottoman mosques of the time, it evokes the majestic beauty of the ancient Hagia Sophia, which lies just meters away. On its walls and in its dome, there are 21,043 turquoise tiles that reflect the sun’s rays that filter through the building’s 260 windows. It is one of the few minarets in the world that contains six minarets, that is, only one minaret less than the Kaaba in Mecca.
The Pope entered at approximately nine o’clock in the morning, Istanbul time, accompanied by the Minister of Religious Affairs, the muezzin, and the city’s main religious authority, the Grand Mufti. At the entrance He took off his shoes He walked in socks on the burgundy carpeted floor with Islamic geometric embroidery.
It was a spiritual visit, based more on gestures than words, as there were no speeches. The Mufti described the building to him as a place of great spiritual power, thanks to its hanging lamps and dozens of domes. He also referred to some “surahs” from the Holy Qur’an written near the mihrab that talk about the Virgin Mary.
The fourth Pope in a mosque
With this visit, Leo XIV becomes the fourth pope to visit a mosque, and the third to enter the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. The first pope to do so was John Paul II, who visited the Great Mosque in Damascus, Syria, in 2001, and also took off his shoes at the entrance to walk barefoot. Then the meeting was surrounded by controversy due to Muslim criticism about the possibility of the Pope praying in the place where the tomb of Saint John the Baptist is located. In order not to expose him to problems. The Mufti of Damascus invited him to stand silently in front of that grave “And quietly observe the beauty of its decorations.” It was assumed that the Pope used this silence to pray.
Something very different happened at the Blue Mosque in 2006, when Benedict XVI visited it. Then the Mufti showed him the beautiful mihrab, which indicates the direction of Mecca and the place where Muslims pray. Therefore, it was the Pope who suggested praying together. “Thank you for this moment of prayer,” he said goodbye to the mufti minutes later. Benedict’s visit sparked a lot of controversy, as it came just two months after his conference in Regensburg, where he included a quote that included words very offensive to Islam.
Here too, Pope Francis commented informally to the mufti about the value of worship as “free prayer” and he stopped in front of the mihrab to pray in silence. “At that moment I felt the need to pray,” the Pope explained during the press conference on the plane during his return to Rome. “I said: Shall we pray a little?” He said: “Yes, yes.” I prayed for Türkiye, for peace, for the Mufti… for everyone… for those who needed it… I really prayed. Above all, I prayed for peace. I said, “Lord, let’s end the war.” “It was a moment of sincere prayer,” he added.
After the end of the visit to the mosque, Pope Leo went to a private meeting with the Christian patriarchs living in Türkiye. Unlike his predecessors, his agenda did not include a visit to the ancient Hagia Sophia. Turkish Catholics did not pay attention to the fact that the Pope did not visit Hagia Sophia. “I was not scheduled to visit it because this mosque was chosen. “His ancestors visited it because it was a museum,” sources from the Catholic Church in Istanbul explained to ABC.
Hagia Sophia is absent
When you arrive, you see the walls of Hagia Sophia, the church opened in 537 as the Christian heart of the Byzantine Empire. It was the seat of the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople, the largest cathedral in the Christian world, and its dome welcomed travelers coming across the Bosphorus Strait. During the “Fourth Crusade” in 1204, it was sacked and desecrated by the Catholics, who held it until 1261 when it was recaptured by the Byzantines.
In 1453, with the conquest of Constantinople, it was besieged and those who took refuge there became slaves. Later, the Ottomans turned it into a mosque, covered its mosaics with plaster, and installed a crescent at its top.
In 1934, Ataturk turned it into a museum. In June 2020, Erdogan issued a decree that the mosque would return to being a mosque, and its Christian mosaics have since been covered up. It was a masterstroke for this skilled player who does not hesitate to exploit the religious factor for political gain. “I think of Hagia Sophia, and I feel great pain,” Pope Francis said a few days later from the window of the Apostolic Palace. There was no response. Only six years ago, when he visited, he had written in the visitors’ book some cautionary words in Greek: “Holy Sophia of God” (“Αγία Σοφία του Θεού”).
Although the Turkish Constitution states that it is a secular state that theoretically guarantees freedoms of conscience, religion, expression, and worship, 98.2% of its population are Muslims. It wasn’t always like this. When the Italian Paolo Bizzetti was Bishop of Anatolia, he stated that when modern Turkey was born in 1923, the country had about 3,000 mosques, and a hundred years later there were more than 80,000 mosques. Some said sarcastically about what happened in Hagia Sophia: “The number of museums is much less than the number of mosques, and it does not make sense to close one of them to open another.”