The possible journeys of Pope Leo XIV: Nicaea, Peking and Moscow

Nicaea, the trip Francis should have made after his resignation from the Gemelli polyclinic had his recovery path gone differently. And then the challenge of Beijing and Moscow, forbidden destinations so far not only for Bergoglio but for all Pontiffs. Where will the new Pope start in his pastoral activity away from home? Will he pick up the thread interrupted by Francis and travel to Nicaea to celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the first great Council or will he open up to new territories in the name of ecumenism? Francis had said on 28 November 2024: "The Jubilee invites us to rediscover the face of Christ and to refocus ourselves in Him.

And during this Holy Year, we will also have the opportunity to celebrate the anniversary of the first great Ecumenical Council, the Council of Nicaea. I am thinking of going there'. And a trip to Turkey was still 'under consideration', on 12 March when Francis was facing a long stay at the Gemelli Hospital to treat bilateral pneumonia, and the press room recalled, putting it somewhat forward, that the mission had never been officially 'announced', although the preparations were actually going ahead.

And Nicea could therefore also be the new Pontiff's first international trip as a sign of continuity. It was a trip strongly desired by Bergoglio, scheduled for 26 May, and which he was working on together with Patriarch Bartholomew, his great friend, to put a new brick in the path of ecumenism. But it was certainly not the only trip that already appeared to be historic and that Francis was looking forward to.

The two 'forbidden' destinations, until today, not only to him but to all Popes, remain Beijing and Moscow. Francis, who as a good Jesuit has always looked to the East, made his strong desire to fly to Beijing, where never a Pope has set foot, clear from the start: "Me in China? But right away,' he told reporters on board the flight that brought him back to the Vatican from his trip to South Korea on 18 August 2014, a flight for which Beijing had granted overflight over its area. A positive sign as, of course, was also the agreement for the appointments of bishops, overseen by his secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, paving the way for the Pope's footprint on Chinese soil one day. Perhaps a legacy that the new Pope will be able to seize.

The second forbidden destination, Moscow, seat of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate, is much more difficult to realise. It is true that in another historic step of the pontificate, Francis is the Pope who has mended fences with the Patriarch of Moscow like no one before, realising the historic meeting with Kirill in a neutral seat such as Cuba, on 12 February 2016. On that occasion, they even signed a document together and it seemed to open some doors. However, the war against Ukraine rippled relations until that video conversation between the Pope and Kirill in which Francis, with a divergence of views from the Moscow Patriarch, emphasised that clerics should not speak the language of politics but 'the language of Jesus'.