Pope Leo flies east to Türkiye and Lebanon: Can he help stabilise the fragile religious peace?

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. 

Dr ROULA TALHOUK is the director of the Institute for Muslim-Christian Studies at St Joseph’s University in Beirut.

For Donald Trump’s administration, there are a few more inviting targets than America’s universities. 

Ivy League institutions, including Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, have lost federal funds and been subject to more direct government control. 

The administration claims it is trying to combat campus domination by the ideological left. 

Philosophy professor YUVAL AVNUR of Scripps College, and two colleagues, Stephanie Muravchik and Jon Shields, were especially worried about these attacks and began to investigate the allegations of bias in university and college courses. They published part of their results in the online journal, Persuasion. 

GUESTS:

• Dr Roula Talhouk, director of the Institute for Muslim-Christian Studies at St Joseph’s University in Beirut.
• Professor Yuval Avnur of Scripps College, California.

This show was made on the lands of the Gadigal People