ISTANBUL – On his last day in Turkey, Pope Leo XIV urged Christian leaders to work together to promote unity, care for creation, and promote a responsible use of new technologies amid their rapid development.

Speaking to leaders and representatives of the various Christian communities present in the region Sunday, the pope said that given their shared faith, they must have a unified voice in the face of current global challenges.

Most urgent is the promotion of peace, he said, saying, “at this time of bloodstained conflict and violence in places both near and far, Catholics and Orthodox are called to be peacemakers.”

“This certainly means taking action, making choices and adopting gestures that build peace, while also acknowledging that peace is not merely the fruit of human effort, but is a gift from God,” he said.

Peace, he insisted, must be pursued with prayer, acts of penance, contemplation and “nurturing a living relationship with the Lord, who helps us to discern what words, gestures and actions to undertake so that we can genuinely be at the service of peace.”

Leo made the appeal Sunday while visiting the Patriarchal Church of Saint George in Istanbul for a joint praying of the Divine Liturgy, prior to his departure for Beirut later that afternoon.

He landed in Turkey Thursday, on Thanksgiving Day, meeting with political leaders and national authorities in Ankara before moving onto Istanbul, where he met with local Catholics and participated in an ecumenical commemoration of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in modern-day Iznik.

The pope also issued a joint declaration with Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, condemning the various wars raging worldwide, calling for peace and unity among Christians, and for the care of creation.

Prior to Sunday’s Divine Liturgy, he paid a visit to the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral, where he thanked God for “the courageous Christian witness of the Armenian people throughout history, often amid tragic circumstances.”

While subtle, the remark was important given the geopolitical sensitivities over the Armenian genocide, in which roughly a 600,000- one million Armenian Christians were killed by the Ottoman Empire between 1915-1917.

Pope Francis has repeatedly called this extermination a “genocide,” causing a brief diplomatic row with Turkey after referring to it as such during his 2016 visit to Armenia. Turkey briefly recalled its ambassador to the Holy See as a result.

Parolin reinforced this position, however, during a visit to Armenia in 2023, where he laid a wreath at the Tsitsernakaberd, the national memorial for victims of the Armenian genocide, reiterating the Vatican’s recognition of the systematic elimination of the Armenian community by the Ottomans.

Leo in Sunday’s speech at the Armenian cathedral said that as Christians, they must each draw on their faith “in order to recover the unity that existed in the early centuries between the Church of Rome and the ancient Oriental Churches.”

“We must also take inspiration from the experience of the early Church in order to restore full communion, a communion which does not imply absorption or domination, but rather an exchange of the gifts received by our Churches from the Holy Spirit,” he said, voicing his own commitment to working for Christian unity.

During the Divine Liturgy at the patriarchal church of Saint George, Bartholomew said that as the successors of Peter and Andrew, the founders of their respective churches, he and Leo “feel bound by ties of spiritual brotherhood, which obligate us to work diligently to proclaim the message of salvation to the world.”

He praised work to restore full unity in past decades, saying, “Christian unity is not a luxury. It is the ultimate prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ: ‘that…all may be one.’”

Christian unity, he said, is “the essential condition for the mission of the Church” and it is “an imperative, particularly in our tumultuous times, when the world is fractured by wars, violence and all kinds of discrimination, while it is devasted by the desire for domination, the quest for profit, and the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources.”

He called for a “unified message of hope” from all Christians, “unequivocally condemning war and violence, defending human dignity and respecting and caring for God’s creation.”

Bartholomew also condemned the war in Ukraine and problems such as pollution, waste and climate change, saying, “We must act as peacemakers. show ourselves as those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and we must behave as good stewards of creation.”

During his praying of the Divine Liturgy at the patriarchal church of Saint George, Pope Leo recalled the joint commemoration of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea Friday.

The Creed that the council produced, and which they recited together during the Divine Liturgy, “unites us in real communion and allows us to recognize each other as brothers and sisters,” he said.

“In the past, there have been many misunderstandings and even conflicts between Christians of different Churches, and there are still obstacles preventing us from achieving full communion,” he said.

However, regardless of these lingering challenges, Leo said the various Christian communities “must not relent in striving towards unity. We must continue to consider each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and to love one another accordingly.”

Leo acknowledged the progress made in the path toward Christian unity, and voiced hope that every autocephalous Orthodox church would engage in formal dialogue with the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, as some are still resistant to dialogue.

“It is one of the priorities of my ministry as Bishop of Rome, whose specific role in the universal Church is to be at the service of all, building and safeguarding communion and unity,” he said.

In addition to striving together for peace, he said it is also necessary for the various Christian churches to join forces in combatting “the threatening ecological crisis.”

This is a crisis, he said, referring to Bartholomew I’s frequent remarks about the environment, which “requires of us a spiritual, personal and communal conversion for changing direction and safeguarding creation.”

“Catholics and Orthodox alike are called to work together in promoting a new mindset so that everyone acknowledges responsibility for caring for the creation that God has entrusted to us,” he said.

Pope Leo also voiced a primary concern of his, which is the challenge presented by the rapid development of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, especially in the field of communication.

“Aware of the enormous advantages that they can offer humanity, Catholics and Orthodox must cooperate in promoting their responsible use,” he said.

New technologies such as AI must be placed at the service of an integral human development, and the must be “universally accessible, so as to ensure that their benefits are not reserved to a small number of people or the interests of a privileged few,” he said.

Leo closed his remarks voicing confidence that, in addressing the challenges of peace, climate and technology, Christians, members of other religious traditions and all people of goodwill “can cooperate harmoniously in working together for the common good.”

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