On the third morning of his first Apostolic Journey abroad, Pope Leo XIV visited the historic Sultan Ahmed Mosque, popularly known as the Blue Mosque, one of Istanbul’s most iconic and revered places of worship.
According to the Holy See Press Office, the Pope spent the visit in silent reflection, marked by “a spirit of recollection and attentive listening, with deep respect for the place and for the faith of those who gather there in prayer.”
Completed in 1617 under Sultan Ahmed I, the Blue Mosque stands on part of the former Great Palace of Constantinople and is celebrated for its more than 21,000 blue and turquoise Iznik tiles that inspired its nickname.
Its construction was carefully chronicled in eight volumes, now housed in the Topkapi Library, underscoring the mosque’s importance as a major centre of worship during the Ottoman Empire.
Pope Leo was received on Saturday morning by Turkey’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy; Istanbul’s provincial mufti, Emrullah Tuncel; and the mosque’s imam, Kurra Hafiz Fatih Kaya. Muezzin Musa Aşgın Tunca guided the Pontiff on a brief tour of the interior.
Following the mosque visit, the Pope is scheduled to hold a private meeting with leaders of local Churches and Christian communities at the Syriac Orthodox Church of Mor Ephrem.
He will later participate in the Doxology alongside Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I at the Patriarchal Church of Saint George.
With this visit, Pope Leo becomes the third pontiff to enter the Blue Mosque, after Pope Francis in 2014 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, whose visit was only the second time in history that a pope had entered a mosque, following John Paul II’s groundbreaking visit to the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus in 2001.
