Pope Leo XIV celebrated Lebanon’s tradition of interfaith coexistence Monday as a beacon of hope for a conflict-torn region, calling for “the divine gift of peace” in a meeting with the country’s Christian and Muslim religious leaders.
The pope received a great welcome from Lebanon’s spiritual leaders on his first day of visit, where billboards bearing his image dotted highways around the capital, Beirut, with thousands of ordinary Lebanese braving the steady rain in the morning to line his motorcade route.
The interfaith meeting in Martyr’s Square in Beirut had Lebanon’s Christian patriarchs and Sunni, Shiite, and Druze spiritual leaders gathered under a tent.
After listening to hymns and readings from the Bible and Quran, Leo XIV praised Lebanon’s tradition of religious tolerance as a beacon for “the divine gift of peace” in the region.
“In an age when coexistence can seem like a distant dream, the people of Lebanon, while embracing different religions, stand as a powerful reminder that fear, distrust and prejudice do not have the final word, and that unity, reconciliation, and peace are possible,” he said.
The Pope’s message emphasised how crucial Lebanon and its Christian population are to the Catholic Church, a place that St. John Paul II famously said was more than just a country but a message of freedom to the rest of the world. At the end of the event, the spiritual leaders planted an olive sapling as a symbol of peace.
While Lebanon is now often cited as a model of religious coexistence, it hasn’t always been that way. The country’s civil war from 1975 to 1990 was largely fought along sectarian lines.
A visit at a tense time
The Pontiff’s visit comes at a newly tenuous time for the tiny Mediterranean country after years of conflict, economic crises and political deadlock, punctuated by the 2020 Beirut port blast. At a time of conflict in Gaza and worsening political tensions in Lebanon, Leo’s visit has been welcomed by the Lebanese as a sign of hope.
“We, as Lebanese, need this visit after all the wars, crises and despair that we have lived through,” said the Rev. Youssef Nasr, the secretary-general of Catholic Schools in Lebanon. “The pope’s visit gives a new push to the Lebanese to rise and cling to their country.”
More recently, Lebanon has been deeply divided over calls for Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group and political party, to disarm after fighting a war with Israel last year that left the country deeply damaged. Despite a ceasefire, Israel has carried out almost daily airstrikes targeting Hezbollah members.
The Grand Sunni Muslim Mufti of Lebanon, Abdul-Latif Derian, welcomed Leo at the interfaith event and recalled the good relations forged by his predecessor, Pope Francis. He cited the 2019 joint statement on human fraternity signed by Francis and the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the seat of Sunni learning in Cairo, Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayeb.
“Lebanon is the land of this message,” Derian said.
A plea for Christians to stay
Today, Christians make up around a third of Lebanon’s 5 million people, giving the small nation on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East.
A power-sharing agreement in place since independence from France calls for the president to be a Maronite Christian, making Lebanon the only Arab country with a Christian head of state
The Vatican sees Christian presence as a bulwark for the church in the region.
Despite their exodus following the country’s civil war, Lebanese Christians have endured in their ancestral homeland.
The rise of the Islamic State Group, which was defeated in 2019 after losing its last stronghold in Syria, forced Christians from Iraq and Syria to flee in large numbers.