Bulletins, Newsletters, and Flocknotes

At 14.15 (local time), the Holy Father Leo XIV left the Apostolic Delegation and transferred by car to Istanbul-Atatürk Airport where he departed by helicopter for İznik, arriving at 15.15, to particpiate in the Ecumenical Prayer Service near the archaeological excavations of the ancient Basilica of Saint Neophytos.

On arrival, at 15.30, the Pope was welcomed by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All-Holiness Bartholomew I, at the entrance to the Visitor Centre near the ancient Basilica of Saint Neophytos. The religious leaders present walked in procession to the platform near the archaeological excavations and stood in a semicircle in front of the icons of Christ and the Council, where they lit a candle.

After an opening hymn and a symbolic gesture, Patriarch Bartholomew I addressed some words of welcome to the Holy Father, who, after the ecumenical prayer and the reading of the Gospel, delivered his address.

At the end of the service, after the hymns, the choral recitation of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the invocations, the recitation of the Our Father and the blessing, the Holy Father and the Patriarch left the platform, followed by the religious leaders, in procession towards the Visitor Centre.

At 16:15, the Pope travelled by car to the İznik heliport and from there, by helicopter, reached Istanbul-Atatürk Airport at 17:00. He then transferred by car to the Apostolic Delegation.

At 18.30, the Holy Father met privately with the bishops of Türkiye.

The following is the address delivered by Pope Leo XIV to those present during the Ecumenical Service:

 

Address of the Holy Father

Dear brothers and sisters,

At a period of history marked by many tragic signs, in which people are subjected to countless threats to their very dignity, the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea is a precious opportunity to ask ourselves who Jesus Christ is in the lives of men and women today, and who he is for each one of us personally.

This question is especially important for Christians, who risk reducing Jesus Christ to a kind of charismatic leader or superman, a misrepresentation that ultimately leads to sadness and confusion (cf. Leo XIV,  Homily, Holy Mass Pro Ecclesia , 9 May 2025). By denying the divinity of Christ, Arius reduced him to a mere intermediary between God and humanity, ignoring the reality of the Incarnation such that the divine and the human remained irremediably separated. But if God did not become man, how can mortal creatures participate in his immortal life? What was at stake at Nicaea, and is at stake today, is our faith in the God who, in Jesus Christ, became like us to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2  Pet  1:4; cf. Saint Irenaeus,  Adversus Haereses , 3, 19; Saint Athanasius,  De Incarnatione , 54, 3).

This Christological confession of faith is of fundamental importance in the journey that Christians are making towards full communion. For it is shared by all Christian Churches and Communities throughout the world, including those which, for various reasons, do not use the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in their liturgies. Indeed, faith “in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages... consubstantial with the Father” ( Nicene Creed ) is a profound bond already uniting all Christians. In this sense, to quote Saint Augustine, in the ecumenical context we can also say that, “although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one” ( Exposition on Psalm 127 ). Consequently, with an awareness that we are already linked by such a profound bond, we can continue our journey of ever deeper adherence to the Word of God revealed in Jesus Christ, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in mutual love and dialogue. In this way, we are all invited to overcome the scandal of the divisions that unfortunately still exist and to nurture the desire for unity for which the Lord Jesus prayed and gave his life. The more we are reconciled, the more we Christians can bear credible witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is a proclamation of hope for all. Moreover, it is a message of peace and universal fraternity that transcends the boundaries of our communities and nations (cf. Francis,  Address to participants in the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity , 6 May 2022).

Today, the whole of humanity afflicted by violence and conflict is crying out for reconciliation. The desire for full communion among all believers in Jesus Christ is always accompanied by the search for fraternity among all human beings. In the Nicene Creed, we profess our faith “in one God, the Father.” Yet, it would not be possible to invoke God as Father if we refused to recognize as brothers and sisters all other men and women, who are created in the image of God (cf.  Second Vatican Ecumenical Council , Declaration  Nostra Aetate , 5). There is a universal fraternity of men and women regardless of ethnicity, nationality, religion or personal perspectives. Religions, by their very nature, are repositories of this truth and should encourage individuals, groups and peoples to recognize this and put it into practice (cf. Leo XIV,  Address at the conclusion of the Meeting for Prayer for Peace , 28 October 2025). Furthermore, we must strongly reject the use of religion for justifying war, violence, or any form of fundamentalism or fanaticism. Instead, the paths to follow are those of fraternal encounter, dialogue and cooperation.

I am deeply grateful to His All Holiness Bartholomew, for it was with great wisdom and foresight that he decided to commemorate together the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in the very place where it was held. I likewise warmly thank the Heads of Churches and Representatives of Christian World Communions who have accepted the invitation to participate in this event. May God the Father, almighty and merciful, hear the fervent prayers we offer him today, and grant that this important anniversary may bear the abundant fruits of reconciliation, unity and peace.

 

The following is the Message sent by the Holy Father Leo XIV to participants in the global meeting of The Economy of Francesco , taking place from 28 to 30 November 2025 (Castel Gandolfo):

 

Message of the Holy Father

Dear young people,

No-one is more in touch with the “new things” on which humanity is staking its future than you. This is why your world meeting is so valuable and takes place in gremio Ecclesiae : not only in the heart, but in the womb of a Church that, with God’s grace, generates faith and love. The Economy of Francesco is the joyful expression of a journey that enriches economic thought and initiative with the seed of the Gospel, which Saint Francis of Assisi accepted sine glossa and to whose transformative power our beloved Pope Francis bore witness with all his strength. Yes, dear friends, the Gospel transfigures human work and produces changes in us that bring abundant life into the world. You know all this well, because in Assisi you did not just dream, but you met people and started projects inspired by the Gospel and capable of making even the desert bloom.

This year, naturally, our grateful thoughts go to Pope Francis: his death was on the day and with the fragrance of Easter. This helps us to preserve his legacy creatively, and particularly commits you, who had a deep understanding with him, to organize the hope that this journey has kindled. In the month of September last year, my Predecessor said to some of you: “In your midst, may a new way of being together and doing business be born that does not produce waste but material and spiritual well-being”. And he immediately added a wish that I would like to make my own: “Have courage, dear friends, have courage! If you are faithful to your vocation, your life will blossom, you will have wonderful stories to tell your children and grandchildren”. [1]

Dear friends, the network of friendship and work that you represent is a “no” to resignation. You can urge many other young people to break out of indifference or the confines of personal or group objectives, in order to welcome the Kingdom of God and his justice through new ways of loving the common good. It is a matter of rekindling dreams, of valuing prayer, study and work, of thinking together, as true energies of renewal.

The title of your meeting is “ Restarting the Economy ”: an economy that restarts is not just a machine that produces, but an activity that restores life to people, to communities, to our common home. To restart means to free from the chains of injustice, to restore what was harmed and to create spaces where every man and woman can breathe dignity and hope. To restart can imply changing direction and exploring new paths.

In the recent meeting with popular Movements, I wished to dwell on the theme of the “new”, because Pope Leo XIII wrote, at the end of the nineteenth century, the Encyclical Rerum Novarum , and this title challenges us to this day. “There are certainly ‘new things’ in the world but, when we say this, we generally adopt a ‘view from the centre’ and refer to things like artificial intelligence or robotics. However today I would like to look at the ‘new things’ with you, taking a view from the periphery”. [2] You are well acquainted with this perspective, because only an economy that divests itself of privilege and embraces reality, starting with the leper, that is, those who are discarded, expelled and removed, can be considered to be “of Francesco”. “This is the viewpoint that I want to convey: the new things seen from the periphery, and the fact that in your efforts you do not limit yourselves to protesting, but also look for solutions”. [3] In this regard, the French Benedictine Ghislain Lafont identified a “principle of smallness” which, he wrote, “It can be expressed thus: the driving force of history is not power, but poverty; or rather: real change comes about through the action of weak elements”. [4]

Dear young people, I encourage you to show through your lives, your endeavours, your studies, the shortcomings of a system that increases inequality and fails to care for the small and the weak. Together, we can welcome God’s dreams and see that they expand our dreams, drawing us into an adventure as a people in which walls and prejudices fall and peace prevails.

I urge you, so that your tireless work is not just social action and linked to passing fads, to nourish your spirit and return to your heart: the Gospels and other books of the Bible are the landscape in which God still makes his voice heard and inspires our visions, putting us in dialogue with his friends, the protagonists of the history of salvation. You will be good businesspeople and good economists if you know the divine economy in this way: it is the secret of so many witnesses who have gone before us and who still walk with us.

Dear young people, go forward. Indeed, let us go forward together! May my blessing reach you and accompany you.

From the Vatican, 26 November 2025

LEO PP. XIV

_____________________

 

[1] Francis, Address to the Delegation of The Economy of Francesco, 25 September 2024.

[2]  Address to participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements , 23 October 2025.

[3] Ibidem.

[4] Ghislain Lafont, Piccolo saggio sul tempo di papa Francesco , EDB, Bologna 2017, p. 51.

Appointment of auxiliary bishop of Hildesheim, Federal Republic of Germany

The Holy Father has appointed the Reverend Martin Marahrens, of the clergy of the diocese of Hildesheim, until now rector of the major seminary and canon of Hildesheim Cathedral, as auxiliary bishop of the same diocese, assigning him the titular see of Cercina.

Curriculum vitae

Msgr. Martin Marahrens was born on 24 May 1977 in Gahrden, diocese of Hildesheim, Land Niedersachsen. He studied philosophy and theology at the Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt and at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, as a resident of the Pontifical German-Hungarian College of Rome.

He was ordained a priest on 10 October 2004 for the diocese of Hildesheim.

He was awarded a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome in 2008, and went on to hold the following offices: deputy parish priest in Burgdorf (since 2008), head of Emmaus youth pastoral care in Duderstadt (2008-2014), pastoral service in the deanery of Hildesheim (2014-2023), vicar of Hildesheim Cathedral (2015-2023), representatives for priests in the personnel department of the Episcopal Curia (since 2023), and until now, rector of the diocesan seminary (since 2014) and canon of Hildesheim Cathedral (since 2024).

At 10.30, the Holy Father Leo XIV left the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit and transferred by car to the nursing home for the elderly of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The Pope was received at the entrance of the rest home by the Mother Superior, the previous Superior, and the Provincial of the Community. Together they proceeded to the Chapel, where the workers, residents and benefactors of the nursing home were waiting.

After the words of welcome from the director of the home, Pope Leo XIV addressed those present.

At the end of the visit, after the recitation of the Hail Mary, the signing of the Book of Honour, the exchange of gifts, the blessing and the group photograph, at 11.10 the Holy Father transferred by car to the Apostolic Delegation, where at 11.30 he met privately with the Chief Rabbi of Türkiye.

The following is Pope Leo XIV’s greeting to those present during the meeting at the nursing home for the elderly of the Little Sisters of the Poor:

 

Greeting of the Holy Father

Dear sisters and brothers, good morning!

I am deeply grateful for Sister’s words of welcome, and for the hospitality shown by all of you. Hospitality is a gift of this home! It is truly a gift that comes from God and is brought to fruition by the Little Sisters of the Poor, the staff, the benefactors, and also by all the residents, in your daily life together. Thank you to everyone!

I would like to share two brief reflections with you.

The first is inspired by your name, dear Sisters, for you are “Little Sisters of the Poor.” This is a beautiful name, and one that makes us think! Yes, the Lord has called you not only to assist or help the poor, but has also called you to be their “sisters!” You are to be like Jesus, whom the Father sent to us not only to help and serve us, but also to be our brother. The secret of Christian charity is that before being  for  others, we must first be  with  others in a communion based on fraternity.

The second reflection was suggested to me by you, the dear residents of this house. You are the  elderly . This word, “elderly,” today risks losing its truest meaning. In many social contexts, where efficiency and materialism dominate, the sense of respect for elderly people has been lost. In contrast, Sacred Scripture and good traditions teach us that – as  Pope Francis  loved to repeat – the elderly are the wisdom of a people, a treasure for their grandchildren, families and society as a whole.

Therefore, a double thank you to this home, which welcomes people in the name of fraternity, and does so particularly with the elderly. We know that this is not easy as it requires a lot of patience and prayer. So now, let us pray to the Lord to accompany and sustain you. Upon all of you, I invoke God’s blessings.

At 9.20 (local time), the Holy Father transferred by car to the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Istanbul, where the prayer meeting with bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated men and women, and pastoral workers took place.

At the main entrance to the Cathedral, the Pope was received by the vicar apostolic of Istanbul and the parish priest, who brought him the cross and holy water for aspersion. Two children offered him flowers. The Holy Father then proceeded along the central nave to the altar, while the choir sang a hymn.

After the welcome greeting from the President of the Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Martin Kmetec of İzmir, the first reading, a responsorial Psalm and the Gospel reading, the Pope delivered his homily.

At the end of the meeting, after the blessing and the final hymn, Pope Leo XIV transferred by car to the rest home for the elderly of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

The following is the homily delivered by the Holy Father during the meeting with the bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated men and women, and pastoral workers:

 

Homily of the Holy Father

Your Excellencies, Dear brother priests, Dear religious sisters and brothers, pastoral workers, and all my brothers and sisters,

It is a great joy for me to be with you. I am grateful to the Lord that in my first Apostolic Journey he has granted me the grace to visit this “holy land” that is Türkiye, a place where the story of the people of Israel meets the birth of Christianity, where the Old and New Testaments embrace and where the pages of numerous Councils were written.

The faith that unites us has deep roots. Obedient to God’s call, our father Abraham set out from Ur of the Chaldeans and then, from the region of Harran in the south of present-day Türkiye, he departed for the Promised Land (cf.  Gen  12:1). In the fullness of time, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, his disciples also came to Anatolia. In Antioch, whose bishop was Saint Ignatius, they were called “Christians” for the first time (cf.  Acts  11:26). From that city, Saint Paul began some of his apostolic journeys that led to the founding of many communities. It was likewise in Ephesus on the shores of the Anatolian peninsula, where, according to some ancient sources, John the Beloved Disciple and Evangelist lived and died (cf. Saint Irenaeus,  Adversus Haereses , III, 3, 4; Eusebius of Caesarea,  Church History,  V, 24, 3).

Furthermore, we recall with admiration the great Byzantine history, the missionary impulse of the Church of Constantinople and the spread of Christianity throughout the Levant. Even today in Türkiye there are many communities of Eastern-rite Christians — Armenians, Syrians and Chaldeans — as well as those of the Latin rite. The Ecumenical Patriarchate remains a point of reference both for its Greek faithful and for those of other Orthodox Churches.

Dear friends, your communities emerged from the richness of this long history, and it is you who are called today to nurture the seed of faith handed down to us by Abraham, the Apostles and the Fathers. The history that precedes you is not something merely to be remembered and then venerated as a glorious past while we look with resignation at how small the Catholic Church has become numerically. On the contrary, we are invited to adopt an evangelical vision, enlightened by the Holy Spirit.

When we look with God’s eyes, we discover that he has chosen the way of littleness, descending into our midst. This is the way of the Lord, to which we are all called to bear witness. The prophets announce God’s promise by speaking of a small shoot that will spring forth (cf.  Is  11:1). Jesus praises the little ones who trust in him (cf.  Mk  10:13–16). He teaches that God’s kingdom does not impose itself with displays of power (cf.  Lk  17:20–21), but grows like the smallest of all the seeds planted in the earth (cf.  Mk  4:31).

This logic of littleness is the Church’s true strength. It does not lie in her resources or structures, nor do the fruits of her mission depend on numbers, economic power or social influence. The Church instead lives by the light of the Lamb; gathered around him, she is sent out into the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. In this mission, she is constantly called to trust in the Lord’s promise: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” ( Lk  12:32). Let us remember also the words of  Pope Francis  who said, “A Christian community in which the faithful, priests and bishops do not follow the path of littleness has no future… The kingdom of God sprouts in small things, always in what is small” ( Homily at Santa Marta , 3 December 2019).

The Church in Türkiye is a small community, yet fruitful like a seed and leaven of the kingdom. I therefore encourage you to cultivate a spiritual attitude of confident hope, rooted in faith and in union with God. There is a need to witness to the Gospel with joy and look to the future with hope. Some hopeful signs are already clearly present. Let us ask the Lord, therefore, for the grace to recognize and to nurture them. There are other signs, perhaps, that we may need to express creatively through perseverance in faith and in witness.

Among the most beautiful and promising signs, I think of the many young people who come knocking at the doors of the Catholic Church with their questions and concerns. In this regard, I urge you to continue the good pastoral work that you are doing. I also encourage you to listen, to accompany young people, to give special attention to those areas where the Church in Türkiye is called to serve: ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, transmitting the faith to the local population, and pastoral service to refugees and migrants.

This last aspect deserves special reflection. The significant presence of migrants and refugees in this country presents the Church with the challenge of welcoming and serving some of the most vulnerable. At the same time, this Church itself is made up largely of foreigners, and many of you — priests, sisters and pastoral workers — come from other lands. This calls for a special commitment to inculturation so that the language, customs and culture of Türkiye become more and more your own. Moreover, the communication of the Gospel always passes through such inculturation.

I would also like to recall that it was in this land of yours that the first eight Ecumenical Councils were held. This year marks the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, a “milestone in the history of the Church but also of humanity as a whole” (Francis,  Address to the International Theological Commission , 28 November 2024). This ever-relevant event puts before us several challenges that I would like to mention.

The first is the importance of  grasping the essence of the faith and of being Christian . Around the Creed, the Church at Nicaea rediscovered its unity (cf. Bull  Spes Non Confundit ,  17). The Creed is not simply a doctrinal formula; it is an invitation to seek — amid different sensibilities, spiritualities and cultures — the unity and essential core of the Christian faith centered on Christ and on the Church’s Tradition. Nicaea still asks us: Who is Jesus for us? What does it essentially mean to be Christian? The Creed, unanimously professed together, becomes a criterion for discernment, a compass, the center around which our beliefs and actions must revolve. In speaking about the connection between faith and works, I would like to thank the international organizations for their support of the Church’s charitable activities, especially for the help offered to the victims following the earthquake in 2023. Here I would single out  Caritas Internationalis  and  Kirche in Not . 

The second challenge is the urgency of  rediscovering in Christ the face of God the Father . Nicaea affirms the divinity of Jesus and his equality with the Father. In Jesus, we find the true face of God and his definitive word about humanity and history. This truth constantly challenges our own ideas of God whenever they do not correspond to what Jesus has revealed. It invites us to ongoing discernment regarding our forms of faith, prayer, pastoral life and spirituality. But there is also another challenge, which we might call a “new Arianism,” present in today’s culture and sometimes even among believers. This occurs when Jesus is admired on a merely human level, perhaps even with religious respect, yet not truly regarded as the living and true God among us. His divinity, his lordship over history, is overshadowed, and he is reduced to a great historical figure, a wise teacher, or a prophet who fought for justice — but nothing more. Nicaea reminds us that Jesus Christ is not a figure of the past; he is the Son of God present among us, guiding history toward the future promised by God.

Finally, the third challenge is  the mediation of faith and the development of doctrine . In a complex cultural context, the Nicene Creed expressed the essence of the faith through the philosophical and cultural categories of its time. Yet only a few decades later, at the First Council of Constantinople, we see that it was further deepened and expanded. Thanks to this doctrinal development, there emerged a new formulation, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that we profess together in our Sunday liturgies. Here too we learn an important lesson: the Christian faith must always be expressed in the languages and categories of the culture in which we live, just as the Fathers did at Nicaea and in the other Councils. At the same time, we must distinguish the essence of the faith from the historical formulas that express it — formulas that are always partial and provisional and can change as doctrine is more deeply understood. Let us recall that the Church’s newest Doctor, Saint John Henry Newman, insisted on the development of Christian doctrine, because doctrine is not an abstract, static idea, but reflects the very mystery of Christ. Therefore, its development is organic, akin to that of a living reality, gradually bringing to light and expressing more fully the essential heart of the faith.

Dear friends, before concluding, I would like to recall someone so dear to you,  Saint John XXIII , who loved and served the people of this land. He wrote, “I like to repeat what I feel in my heart: I love this country and its inhabitants.” While looking from the window of the Jesuit house at the fishermen busy with their boats and nets on the Bosporus, he continued: “The sight moves me. The other night, around one in the morning, it was pouring rain, yet the fishermen were there, undaunted in their hard labor… To imitate the fishermen of the Bosporus — working day and night with their torches lit, each on his small boat, following the direction of their spiritual leaders — this is our serious and sacred duty.”

I hope that you will be moved by this same passion, in order to keep alive the joy of faith, and continue to work as courageous fishermen in the Lord’s boat. May Mary Most Holy, the  Theotokos , intercede for you and keep you in her care. Thank you.