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.