Pope Leo concluded his visit to Lebanon with a heartfelt appeal at the airport before departing for Rome on Dec. 2: “May the attacks and hostilities cease. We must recognize that armed struggle brings no benefit. While weapons are lethal, negotiation, mediation and dialogue are constructive. Let us all choose peace as a way, not just as a goal!”
He recalled what Saint John Paul II had said in 1997: “Lebanon is more than a country; it is a message!” and urged the people of Lebanon, “Let us learn to work together and hope together, so that this may become a reality.”
He also said, “We hope to involve the entire Middle East in this spirit of fraternity and commitment to peace, including those who currently consider themselves enemies.”
Earlier, in his homily at Mass at the waterfront in Beirut for more than 150,000 people, he issued a strong message of encouragement and hope and called on this small nation, where Christians and Muslims live together, to” stand up” and to be “a home of justice and fraternity” and “a prophetic sign of peace for the whole of the Levant!”
He told them that “the only way” to achieve this is “by disarming our hearts.” The pope urged his listeners to “cast off the armor of our ethnic and political divisions, open our religious confessions to mutual encounter and reawaken in our hearts the dream of a united Lebanon.”
His pitch for justice, fraternity and peace—a constant throughout this visit—reached far and wide across this small country of more than five million people, which has seen so much war since independence in 1943. The country fought its civil war from 1975 to1992, and more recently Lebanon has been at war with Israel, triggered by the war in Gaza that started after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. Hezbollah in Lebanon joined Hamas in the war against Israel, which in turn responded with attacks on Lebanon, including here in Beirut. A ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has been in place for over a year, though Israeli bombing has taken place almost every day, mostly in southern Lebanon but also even in Beirut a week ago. People in Lebanon fear the war could commence again after Leo’s visit.
In addition to all this, “the situation economically in Lebanon is now pretty disastrous,” Daniel Corrou, S.J., the American-born director of the Jesuit Refugee Service in the Middle East, told me on the eve of the pope’s visit. He recalled that is was “an absolute disaster in 2020, 2021 and 2022 when we had an economic crisis, massive devaluation of the currency, massive flight of any well-skilled, highly trained person because a medical doctor or university professor, on the salary that they were making with the value of the Lebanese lira, they could not even feed their own families. And so we saw doctors moving to Canada or the Gulf and professors moving to France. We saw that in the Jesuit hospital, the Jesuit universities and elsewhere.”
In the last two years, however, Father Corrou said, “the currency has stabilized against the U.S. dollar and that has given some stability, and there was a lot of construction. But as we see in our parish work with migrants, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. The poor Lebanese and migrant workers have seen the value of their income get much lower, while the cost of living has gotten much higher.”
Pope Leo referred to this situation in his homily when he told his audience that the immense natural beauty of this country “is overshadowed by poverty and suffering, and the wounds that have marked your history.”
Apart from the wounds of war, another open wound is the failure to carry out the five-year investigation on the major explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020, and the terrible suffering that accompanied it. Pope Leo began his last morning in Lebanon by going to that site, and in what was surely the most powerfully emotional moment of his entire visit, watched by the whole nation on television, the Augustianian pope, dressed in white, stood alone in front of the memorial at the site of the explosion and prayed in silence, eyes closed for some minutes. Next, he bent down to lay a wreath, and afterward lit a red memorial lamp. He met many relatives of the explosion’s victims, as well as some of the survivors—a total of 60 persons in all, who had stood nearby and watched. He touched hearts when he went down on his haunches to speak with and comfort a young boy, and when later he embraced a young woman in tears. It was a moment the nation is unlikely to forget, and it is likely to give a strong impetus to complete the judicial investigation that politics has hitherto prevented. Leo briefly referred to this moment in his homily; he did not need to say more. His gesture was worth more than any words.
However, in his farewell speech at the airport he said more, telling the nation: “I was deeply moved by my brief visit to the port of Beirut, where an explosion devastated the area, not to mention many lives. I prayed for all the victims, and I carry with me the pain, and the thirst for truth and justice, of so many families, of an entire country.”
In his homily at Mass, he told the crowd, “the beauty of your country is also overshadowed by the many problems that afflict you, the fragile and often unstable political context, the dramatic economic crisis that weighs heavily upon you and the violence and conflicts that have reawakened ancient fears.”
“In such a scenario,” he said, “gratitude [for the natural beauty and other good things of this country] easily gives way to disillusionment, songs of praise find no place in the desolation of the heart and hope is dried up by uncertainty and confusion.”
He urged them not to give in to this negative way of thinking by reminding them that “the Kingdom that Jesus comes to inaugurate is marked, in fact, by the very characteristic described by the prophet Isaiah: it is a shoot, a small branch sprouting from a trunk. It is a small sign of hope that promises rebirth when everything else seems to be dying.” He recalled that “the coming of the Messiah was announced in the smallness of a shoot because he can only be recognized by the little ones, by those who humbly know how to recognize the hidden details and traces of God in a seemingly lost story.”
He encouraged the people to “see the small lights that shine in the night, small shoots that sprout forth and small seeds planted in the arid garden in this era of history.” He told them that he sees these lights in “your sincere and genuine faith, rooted in your families and nourished by Christian schools” and in “the constant work of parishes, congregations and movements to meet the questions and needs of the people.” He said he sees them too in “the many priests and religious who devote themselves to their mission amid many difficulties” and in “the lay people dedicated to charitable works and the promotion of the Gospel in society.”
He said he joins them in praising God “for these lights that strive to illuminate the darkness of the night, and for these small and invisible shoots that nevertheless open up hope for the future.” He said these lights, these shoots, are a sign that God “is with us” and “does not let us falter” and “they must lead us to a transformation of the heart, a conversion of life and a realization that God has made us precisely to live in the light of faith, the promise of hope and the joy of charity.”
Pope Leo told these Lebanese Christians, “we are all called to cultivate these shoots, to not be discouraged, to not give in to the logic of violence and the idolatry of money, and to not resign ourselves in the face of the spreading evil.”
“Everyone must do their part, and we must unite our efforts so that this land can return to its former glory” and “disarming our hearts is the only way to do this.” He appealed to them, “Let us cast off the armor of our ethnic and political divisions, open our religious confessions to mutual encounter and reawaken in our hearts the dream of a united Lebanon. A Lebanon where peace and justice reign, where all recognize each other as brothers and sisters and, finally, where the words of the prophet Isaiah can be fulfilled: ‘The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion shall graze together’” (Is 11:6).
He concluded by telling them, “This is the dream entrusted to you; it is what the God of peace places in your hands.”
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