Pope Leo XIV marks a high point of his his first foreign trip to Turkey with a pilgrimage to the site where early Christian church leaders met 1,700 years ago under the auspices of the Roman Emperor Constantine to host the Council of Nicaea .

Leo will pray with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, at the site of the 325 AD gathering, now the town of Iznik, and sign a joint declaration in a show of Christian unity.

The unprecedented gathering of at least 250 bishops from around the Roman Empire during the first council established the first version of the Nicene Creed, a statement of faith that millions of Christians still recite each Sunday. Eastern and Western churches were united until the Great Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated

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