Pope Leo flies east next week on his first overseas visit as pontiff. He goes first to Türkiye, a country where the Christian population has dwindled to less than one per-cent. 

He’ll meet the Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholemew, who leads most of the world’s Orthodox Christians, and with the controversial president of Türkiye, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

Erdogan’s been styling himself as a new sultan of the broader Islamic world. 

But it will be the second leg of Leo’s trip to Lebanon that’s potentially more challenging. 

Christians are around a third of the population but there are real fears that external actors, including Iran and Israel, could destabilise the fragile religious settlement that has survived for more than 30 years. 

GUEST:

• Dr Roula Talhouk, director of the Institute for Muslim-Christian Studies at St Joseph’s University in Beirut.

Related story - Taybeh is the last predominantly Christian village left in the West Bank