Pope Leo at the Blue Mosque

But perhaps the most striking symbolic moment of the papacy so far came on his first foreign Apostolic journey. The Holy Father arrived in Turkey, the cradle of Christianity which under Islamic rule has seen its Christian population almost disappear, to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. On the third day of his visit, the Pope travelled to the Blue Mosque, an iconic imperial mosque in the heart of Istanbul and an emblem of the country’s Islamic identity.