The first U.S. pope chose mainly Muslim Turkey as his first overseas destination to mark the 1,700th anniversary of a landmark early Church council there that produced the Nicene Creed

International News via Reuters:

Pope Leo arrived in Turkey on his first trip outside Italy as leader of the Catholic Church on Thursday and was expected to make appeals for peace in the Middle East and urge unity among long-divided Christian churches.

The first U.S. pope chose mainly Muslim Turkey as his first overseas destination to mark the 1,700th anniversary of a landmark early Church council there that produced the Nicene Creed, still used by most of the world’s Christians today.

Leo landed in the capital Ankara shortly after midday (0900 GMT) for what is a crowded three-day itinerary in Turkey before heading on to Lebanon. It will be closely watched as he makes his first speeches overseas and visits sensitive cultural sites.

PAPAL TRIPS ABROAD DRAW GLOBAL ATTENTION

The Turkish and Vatican flags flew above the cockpit as Leo disembarked from the plane, to be greeted by a Turkish delegation led by the country’s culture and tourism minister.

Speaking to journalists aboard the papal flight from Rome, Leo said he wanted to use his first overseas trip to urge peace for the world, and to encourage people of different backgrounds to live together in harmony.

“We hope to… announce, transmit, proclaim how important peace is throughout the world,” the pope said at the beginning of the three-hour flight. “And to invite all people to come together, to search for greater unity, greater harmony.”

Foreign travel has become a major part of the modern papacy, with popes attracting international attention as they lead events with crowds sometimes in the millions, give foreign policy speeches and conduct international diplomacy.

“It’s a very important trip because we do not know much yet about Leo’s geopolitical views, and this is the first big chance for him to make them clear,” Massimo Faggioli, an Italian academic who follows the Vatican, told Reuters.

LEO TO MEET TURKISH PRESIDENT AND ORTHODOX PATRIARCH

Leo was elected in May by the world’s Catholic cardinals to succeed the late Pope Francis. A relative unknown on the world stage before his election, Leo spent decades as a missionary in Peru and only became a Vatican official in 2023.

Francis had been planning to visit Turkey and Lebanon but was unable to go because of his worsening health.

Leo, 70, was scheduled to meet President Tayyip Erdogan and address political leaders in the Turkish capital.

He will fly on Thursday evening to Istanbul, home to Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians.

Orthodox and Catholic Christians split in the East-West Schism of 1054, but have generally sought in recent decades to build closer ties.

Leo and Bartholomew travel on Friday to Iznik, 140 km (90 miles) southeast of Istanbul and once called Nicaea, where early churchmen formulated the Nicene Creed, which lays out what remain the core beliefs of most Christians today.

In a departure from normal practice – popes usually speak Italian on foreign trips – Leo is expected to speak English in his speeches in Turkey. 

On the flight to Ankara, two journalists presented the American pope with pumpkin pies, a staple of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday that was also taking place on Thursday. 

PEACE WILL BE KEY THEME OF LEBANESE LEG

Peace is expected to be a key theme of the pope’s visit to Lebanon, which starts on Sunday.

Lebanon, which has the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East, has been rocked by the spillover of the Gaza conflict as Israel and the Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim militant group Hezbollah went to war, culminating in a devastating Israeli offensive.

Last Sunday, Israel killed the top military official in Iran-backed Hezbollah in an airstrike on a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut despite a year-long, U.S.-brokered truce.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Monday that necessary security precautions were being taken to ensure the pope’s safety in Lebanon, but he would not comment on specifics.

Leaders in Lebanon, which hosts 1 million Syrian and Palestinian refugees and is also struggling to recover after years of economic crisis, are worried Israel will dramatically escalate its strikes in the coming months and hope the papal visit might bring global attention to the country.

Reporting by Joshua McElwee; Additional reporting by Daren Butler in Istanbul; Editing by Gareth Jones, Alvise Armellini, Jonathan Spicer and Alex Richardson

The attack on the Catholic school has laid bare President Bola Tinubu’s faltering security efforts

International News via Reuters:

The families of Papiri had long called for security forces to protect their children at the school in northern Nigeria where more than 300 pupils were kidnapped by gunmen last week, in one of the country’s worst mass abductions.

They say that no one came.

“Neither the police, nor the military nor the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps responded to our demands,” said Dauda Gwanja, whose 15-year-old son Zakariya was among the pupils abducted from St Mary’s school in Papiri village.

Instead, the village had arranged for volunteer men to guard the premises. But when dozens of gunmen on motorbikes stormed the school on Friday morning, the unarmed guards knew they stood no chance and fled, he told Reuters.

The attack on the Catholic school has laid bare President Bola Tinubu’s faltering security efforts, which have been under heightened scrutiny since U.S. President Donald Trump threatened military action over the treatment of Christians.

TINUBU’S SECURITY PROMISES UNFULFILLED

Two-and-a-half years into Tinubu’s term, rating agencies have praised his economic reforms but almost daily attacks remain broadly unchecked, despite his pledge to recruit more soldiers and police officers and better pay and equip them.

Armed gangs routinely kidnap schoolchildren for ransom in remote places like Papiri, a dusty village with a patchy phone network which lies 6 km (4 miles) from the nearest police outpost – which only deals with petty crime – and a four-hour drive from the nearest town.

In Nigeria’s northeast, attacks on civilians by jihadist militants appear to have eased in recent months, but insurgents have used drones and heavy firepower to overrun army bases, killing troops and carting away weapons.

The attack at St Mary’s school in Niger state, in which 12 teachers were also seized, was one of the worst mass abductions ever recorded in Nigeria – surpassing even the infamous Chibok kidnapping in 2014 of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram.

TINUBU REDEPLOYS SECURITY RESOURCES

It was the third mass abduction in northern Nigeria in the space of a few days, with another school and a church also targeted.

Tinubu cancelled two foreign trips following the abductions and ordered security forces to go after the assailants.

On Sunday, the 73-year-old president instructed the police to redeploy tens of thousands of officers assigned to “VIPs” including politicians, company executives and celebrities, to focus on core duties like protecting ordinary people.

Tinubu also said 30,000 more policemen would be recruited to fight the bandits that roam across isolated hamlets and border areas where the state is largely absent and weapons abound.

But the closure of nearly 50 schools in the north, for fear they could be targets of armed gangs, shows the limits of the government’s own faith in being able to stop the wave of kidnappings quickly.

QUARTER OF POLICE FORCE GUARDS VIPS

Agora Policy, a Nigerian think tank which has long called for police reform, says that at least 100,000 officers – more than a quarter of the total police force, Africa’s largest – are currently assigned to protecting VIPs and politicians.

“We should take this resurgence (in attacks)…to embark on the root-and-branch reforms that we have left undone for so long,” said Waziri Adio, the think tank’s head, calling for more police recruits and also better pay, training and equipment.

A low-ranking police officer earns a monthly net pay of 80,000 naira ($55) in Nigeria. When attached to politicians or other officials, police officers can receive handouts like food and gifts that exceed their salary, and the job is less risky.

The military are only relatively better paid – an army private earns 114,000 naira ($78.50) a month, rising to 200,000 naira if posted to the frontline fighting insurgents, two serving troops said.

Soldiers often complain of fatigue after being deployed for long periods without rest, and fret over the payments of allowances that boost their salary, said Mike Kebonkwu, a retired army officer and security analyst who has investigated insurgents’ attacks on troops.

He said that Nigerian security forces often have to contend with an enemy that is nimble and better adapted to the terrain, with bandits hiding in dense forests with their hostages.

INTELLIGENCE FAILURES COMPOUND SECURITY CRISIS

In Kebbi state in the northwest, questions were raised over how gunmen kidnapped 25 girls from a boarding school last week when authorities had received intelligence of a possible attack.

State governor Nasir Idris said soldiers had been deployed to protect the school but left in the early hours of November 17. Less than an hour later, gunmen attacked, killed the vice principal and abducted the girls, he said.

“We … ask the military authority to also investigate and find out who gave that order (to withdraw troops),” Idris told reporters last week.

A few days before that raid, a Nigerian brigadier-general was captured and killed by the militant group known as Islamic State West Africa Province in Borno state in the northeast.

The general had earlier escaped an ambush and was in contact with his base over the phone, sharing his live location. But insurgents got to him first, leading to suspicions that his location may have been leaked to them, two army sources said.

The military did not respond to Reuters questions about the two incidents. 

($1 = 1,452.6300 naira)

Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe, additional reporting by Ben Ezeamalu in Lagos, Abraham Achirga in Abuja and Ahmed Kingimi in Maiduguri, Editing by Silvia Aloisi and Ros Russell