(LIVE BLOG) POPE LEO DEPARTING CONSTANTINOPLE FOR BEIRUT
On Friday Pope Leo XIV began a six-day trip that will take him to Turkey from Nov. 27 to 30, and to Lebanon from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2. Upon his arrival in Anatolia the Pope paid homage at the grave of the genocidal Nationalist Kemal Ataturk (more) and addressed a political gathering at the Presidential Palace in Ankara (link). On Saturday Pope Leo joined Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for a historic full ceremony and Doxology at the Patriarchal Church of Saint George in Constantinople. Prior to departing for Lebanon, Pope Leo participated in the divine liturgy with Patriarch Bartholomew.
Nov, 30, 2025 DRM News: Pope Leo & Patriarch Bartholomew Deliver Powerful Messages on Human Dignity.
On Sunday Nov. 30, Saint Andrew's Day, Pope Leo visited to the Armenian Apostolic Cathedral in Constantinople (video) before flying to Beirut.
After Divine Liturgy in the Patriarchal Church of Saint George, Pope Leo XIV and Patriarch Bartholomew delivered strong messages on Ecumenism.
As expected Pope Leo reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s commitment to the pursuit of full Christian communion. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew called on all Christians to raise a united voice against war, violence, and human suffering.
He condemned the bloodshed in Ukraine. In the process that tries to insert a political entity -- the Orthodox Church of Ukraine -- into the country, slandering and outlawing the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church as an arm of the Russian Patriarch, His Eminence sides with the schismatics (more).
Nov. 29, 2025 DRM News: Pope Leo Joins Orthodox Leader Patriarch in Istanbul Doxology.
Pope Leo met with local Christian leaders and signed a ecumenical declaration with Patriarch Bartholomew in which they expressed their intent towards unification. The Pope continued his historic visit to Constantinople with a Mass at Volkswagen Arena.
On Friday, 1700 years after the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, Pope Leo and Patriarch Bartholomew joined in Nicaea for a display of Christian unity.
Note: What are the Council of Nicaea, the Nicene Creed and the Filioque Clause (video). The Ultimate Argument Against the Filioque (video).
Nov. 28, 2025 DRM News: FULL EVENT: Pope Leo & Orthodox Patriarch Reunite Churches After 1700 Years in Historic Meet.
Prior to embarking on his trip, Pope Leo issued a letter titled "In Unitate Fidei" in which he laid out conditions for ecumenical unity. Eastern Orthodox vlogger David Erhan, specializing in philosophy and theology, analyzed the content of the letter from his homeland in Turkey.
Nov. 27, 2025 David Erhan: An Orthodox Appraisal of Pope Leo's Letter About Nicaea.
Adding my own two cents to David's analysis, I would say that there is not just a ravine, but an entire ocean separating these two branches of Christianity, philosophically and theologically speaking.
The letter oozes Nominalism, which Nathan Jacobs describes as "the philosophy from hell" (link). Whatever the motivation of the scholastics was, this medieval fallacy marks the shift from the world as objective, to subjective.
In other words, it makes reality into whatever you want it to be. Every ideology and world view that has since emerged in the West, is based on and built further on this error.
This not just directly opposes the Eastern Orthodox world view, it makes, synthesis -- the transcendence of the spiritual world into the physical world -- impossible.
Any compromise with Roman Catholicism on basic points would destroy the only branch of Christianity that is following the ancient world view. Let's have look at the mystery of baptism as an example, to see if we can make this contradiction more concrete.
Roman Catholicism has reduced baptism to the sprinkling of holy water on the child's head as a gesture that symbolizes actual baptism, which is the emersion of the entire body three times in living water, that is, flowing water, such as from a spring.
If your world view is synthesis, i.e. the spiritual transcends the physical in reality, a mere abstract, symbolic act is no alternative for the real metaphysical event in which the Holy Spirit physically inspires the person who is being baptized.
This is just one example of the ocean that separates Eastern Orthodoxy from the Western Christian denominations. That is, apart of all the other philosophical and theological differences that separate them as a result.
The Western branches of Christianity are full of symbolism and abstractions. Not one teaches synthesis. The two world views are so antithetical, that a compromise would destroy Orthodoxy.
Roman Catholicism has nothing to offer Orthodoxy. Unless the Patriarch of the West -- the Bishop of Rome -- is willing to erase over a thousand years of errors, the efforts of these two champions of Ecumenism are wasting their time on earth chasing a delusion.
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