Forty miles north of Beirut, nestled in the Lebanese mountains, is Annaya, a village devoted to St. Charbel, the beloved patron saint of Lebanon. Pope Leo XIV is scheduled to arrive in Beirut on Nov. 30. After meetings with top politicians, he will travel to Annaya on Dec. 1.

“He will spend around 45 minutes here to visit the monastery and pray at the tomb, so I will not be able to speak to him, but we are thrilled to host His Holiness in our monastery,” the Rev. Louis Matar says. Father Matar is the caretaker of the monastery and the official keeper of the registry of miracles popularly attributed to St. Charbel.

The pope will then visit the Church of Our Lady of Lebanon, located in the mountains above Beirut, in Harissa.

Devotion to St. Charbel “is the easiest road to God,” according to pilgrim Paula Harfouche. She is sitting on a bench outside the Monastery of St. Maron with her friend Farida Aoun. Next to the two friends, other shrine visitors busily arrange themselves for smartphone “selfies” before a statue of the saint.

“We pray to Jesus, Mary and St. Charbel every single day,” Mrs. Harfouche says. The Lebanese saint has a special place in her heart. Thousands of miraculous interventions have been attributed to St. Charbel. He has become a national spiritual resource for those who are very ill or bereft of hope because of their ailments.

St. Charbel lived as a monk and then for many years as a hermit in Annaya. On the 22nd of each month, hundreds of people attend a procession and Mass to honor a saint who lived in poverty and prayer, devoting himself to the poor. Around four million people visit each year for these processions.

“We would like to come here every 22nd,” Mrs. Harfouche says, “but we only come when we don’t [have] work.”

Pilgrims walk up the hill to St. Charbel’s hermitage, then back to the monastery. The participants visit his tomb and recite a rosary. On this Nov. 22, the weather is still warm in Lebanon, and thousands of people of all ages and social backgrounds have come to revere St. Charbel.

The main building of the monastery has a central courtyard where pilgrims light candles and ritually splash their faces, hands and feet with holy water. Surrounding the courtyard are several small churches and offices.

Inside the monastery, visitors can tour a museum dedicated to the saint. It includes the wooden bed he slept on for 23 years as a hermit, as well as pieces of clothing and, most importantly, his tomb, located in a small room where pilgrims make donations and pray for miracles.

St. Charbel was born in 1828 as Youssef Antoun Makhlouf. His father was a farmer who died while returning home after being conscripted into the Turkish army. His widowed mother was well known for her piety.

Youssef Antoun was drawn to religion as a youth. At the age of 23, he entered the Lebanese Maronite Order at the Monastery of Our Lady of Mayfouk. He had to do so against the wishes of his family, who wanted him to remain on the family farm.

Two years later, in 1853, he moved to the monastery in Annaya, where he became Brother Charbel. The name, from a Syriac origin, can be translated as “The Story of God.”

“He left everything, his family, his friends and his name, Youssef, to give himself to God and become Brother Charbel,” Father Matar says.

During his life, he welcomed all visitors, whatever their religion, and prayed for everyone who asked for it. In a society that has often suffered from interreligious violence and tension, St. Charbel has become a figure revered by Lebanon’s Christians, Muslims and Druze. Many miracles attributed to his intervention have occurred in non-Christian households.

The saint lived in austere conditions at the monastery, often fasting and sleeping on a wooden board. In 1875, after 22 years as a monk, he moved into the nearby hermitage of Saints Peter and Paul, where he devoted the last 23 years of his life to prayer and solitude.

He died in 1898 while celebrating Mass on Christmas Eve. Today, Charbel is one of the most common Christian names in Lebanon.

The monastery where he finished his earthly life dates back to 1811. It was built at the same time as the hermitage, located only a few meters away. Over decades, the monastery and hermitage expanded to accommodate more monks, and, after St. Charbel’s beatification in 1965, a shrine was built to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims.

But the monthly processions on the 22nd began decades later, after a miraculous intervention was attributed to the saint.

On Jan. 22, 1993, a Lebanese woman, Nohad El Chami, experienced a vision of St. Charbel in her sleep. In her vision, he operated on her, and she woke up with two scars clearly visible on her neck. Her illness, hemiplegia resulting in blocked arteries and partial paralysis, had disappeared.

In her vision, the saint told her: “I want you to come up to the monastery and hermitage in Annaya on the 22nd of every month and attend Mass in thanksgiving.” Nohad began her monthly devotion, and before long, others began to join her. She participated in these processions every month until her death in May 2025.

Now hundreds of pilgrims come each month to attend Mass in St. Charbel’s shrine. They join a candlelit procession and pray at his tomb. Over 29,000 miracles have been registered by visitors to the shrine.

One of the most recent miracles, reported on Nov. 16, involved an 8-year-old boy from Zahleh, a city in the center of Lebanon. The child had a dangerously low platelet count and suffered hematomas all over his body. After his family spent a night in intense prayer to St. Charbel, the young boy woke the next morning, explaining that St. Charbel had blessed him during his sleep.

The family rushed him to the hospital to have his blood tested, and his platelet level had become normal. Other miracles attributed to the saint’s intercession have occurred in other parts of the world.

Carmen Vera, a 99-year-old Argentinian woman, recovered her sight and her hearing last October. The Rev. Pedro Shawah, her pastor, never surrendered hope for Carmen. He told her all about the life and death of St. Charbel. He anointed her with the holy oil of St. Charbel, regular Lebanese olive oil placed near his tomb and blessed by the monks of the monastery, and she was cured a few hours later.

Nov. 22 is not only a day to celebrate St. Charbel; it is also Lebanon’s Independence Day. But that celebration was canceled this year as tensions and fears of a resumption of war between Lebanon and Israel rose again.

“The pope’s visit gives us a lot of hope…. In Lebanon, religion is deeply intertwined with politics,” Mrs. Harfouche says. “We hope he will be able to send a message to the world for peace. His journey is about peacemakers; we hope he can be a peacemaker and stop the war.”

Mrs. Harfouche and Mrs. Aoun originally come from the south of Lebanon but have lived in Beirut most of their lives. Even though the war with Hezbollah militants ended, at least technically speaking, in November 2024, Lebanon continues to experience frequent air strikes conducted by the Israel Defense Forces.

According to the UNIFIL, the U.N. forces in south Lebanon, there have been more than 10,000 cease-fire violations since Hezbollah militants and the I.D.F. agreed to a truce a year ago. For the two women, it has been a heartbreaking experience.

“The country is in a horrible situation, between the economic crisis and the ongoing violations of the cease-fire, the pope’s visit is really something that we are happy to look forward to,” Mrs. Harfouche says.

St. Charbel has proved over time for all Lebanese a unifying figure in a divided country. The nation’s patron saint is beloved all over the world among the vast Maronite diaspora. “Everyone loves him in Lebanon, through all [its] religions,” Salim Azar, a 28-year-old Maronite Christian, says.

“In my car, as many others do, I have a little sticker of St. Charbel. We believe it is to keep us safe on the road.” The reverence for St. Charbel is shared by both practicing Maronites and more secular Lebanese. Depictions of the saint can be found as small statues and images in most Lebanese households.

“He is our saint—the original one. We have many saints in Lebanon, but he is the one we go to for everything,” Elie Khoury, 30, says. “Spiritually, we are more drawn to him than any other saints; I cannot explain why. I believe it is because we have so much information about him, and we can relate to his close relationship to God.”

Mr. Azar, who comes from a village around 15 miles east of Annaya, remains something of a skeptic regarding the Lebanese devotion to their Mar (Arabic for saint) Charbel. “I believe many people pray to St. Charbel because of all the miracles he’s performed,” he says.

“He is not only a saint that we love because he is from our land, looks like us, grew up like our ancestors, but he is also very effective for those hoping for a miracle.”

Lebanese live in both love for the saint and hope for a miracle that only St. Charbel, the “doctor in the sky,” can perform, he explains.

For Ms. Khoury, as well as many other Lebanese Christians, the village of Annaya and its monastery have become a place to escape the chaos of Lebanon. “Mar Charbel makes me feel calm, especially in Annaya.”

“He speaks directly to each person’s heart, in whatever language you speak. This is why people pray to him! If you speak Arabic, he speaks Arabic; if you speak Russian, he speaks Russian. He speaks all the languages there are, so it is easy for people to communicate with him,” Father Matar said, adding, “Mar Charbel talks to the world, and the world listens.”

The simplicity of the brother, then father turned hermit, is what touches the Lebanese people the most. In Lebanon, people have the need to “feel seen and have a good image we show to others,” despite the nation’s many hardships, Ms. Khoury says. “In a society that is all about appearance, having a saint like St. Charbel is grounding.”

Clotilde Bigot is a freelance journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon.