Leo took his shoes off and, in his white socks, toured the the 17th-century mosque, looking up at its soaring tiled domes and the Arabic inscriptions on its columns as an imam pointed them out to him.

The Vatican had said Leo would observe a “brief moment of silent prayer” in the mosque, but he did not. An imam of the mosque, Asgin Tunca, said he had invited Leo to pray, since the mosque was “Allah’s house”, but the Pope declined.

Speaking to reporters after the visit, the imam said he had told the Pope: “It’s not my house, not your house, (it’s the) house of Allah.”

He said he told Leo: “’If you want, you can worship here’, I said. But he said, ‘That’s OK’.”

He added: “He wanted to see the mosque, wanted to feel (the) atmosphere of the mosque, I think. And was very pleased.”

Later, V

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