Pope Francis expressed hope that he will be able to visit Turkey this year, to personally attend the commemoration of the 1.700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea – the First Ecumenical Council of Christianity.

The visit to Nicaea, near present-day Iznik southeast of Istanbul, would have been part of the Holy Year, which the Vatican celebrates every 25 years.

On the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in May, the pope would again call for overcoming the schism between Catholic and Orthodox Christendom that began with the Great Schism of 1054. In September, the Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I invited Pope Francis to a meeting in Nicaea and joint celebration of the anniversary. Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew met in 2014 in Turkey and in Jerusalem.

In 325, during the time of the Roman emperor Constantine I, nearly 300 bishops gathered in Nicaea to discuss the nature of Jesus Christ in relation to His relationship with the Father and accepted the first unified and generally accepted Christian doctrine.

The Pope told theologians at the Vatican on Thursday that "the Council of Nicaea is not only historically significant for the Church, but also for humanity in general."