Pope Leo XIV is heading to Turkey on his first foreign trip. He's fulfilling Pope Francis’ plans to mark an important Orthodox anniversary and bring a message of peace to the region at a crucial time for efforts to end the war in Ukraine and ease Mideast tensions. Leo is arriving Thursday first in Ankara, where he has a meeting planned with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a speech to the country’s diplomatic corps. He’ll then move onto Istanbul for three days of ecumenical and interfaith meetings that will be followed by the Lebanese leg of his trip. Leo’s visit comes as Turkey has cast itself as a key intermediary in peace negotiations for the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

Pope Leo XIV is embarking on his first foreign trip. His pilgrimage to Turkey and Lebanon would be delicate under any circumstances but is even more fraught given Mideast tensions and the media glare that will document history’s first American pope on the road. Leo is fulfilling a trip Pope Francis had planned to make. In Turkey, he'll mark an important anniversary with the Orthodox church. In Lebanon, he’ll try to boost a long-suffering Christian community and country still demanding justice from the 2020 Beirut port blast. Leo, who spent 12 years as the global superior of his Augustinian religious order and two decades as a missionary in Peru, says he loves to travel. And in recent weeks, he has shown diplomatic dexterity in answering questions on the fly from reporters.

HEYBELIADA, Turkey (AP) — As Pope Leo XIV prepares to embark on his first trip abroad with a visit to Turkey to mark a key event that shaped t…