When the Vatican announced last month that Pope Leo XIV would visit Lebanon on his first overseas trip, the country’s Catholic bishops fired off a call to the faithful: Come and project the strength of Christianity in the Middle East.
With Pope Leo set to arrive in Lebanon on Sunday, scores of Christians from across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq are expected to be there to greet him, seizing an opportunity to assert their influence even as their numbers decline in the region.
The last papal visit to Lebanon was in 2012. Pope Leo arrives, on the second leg of a trip that began in Turkey on Thursday, at a moment of deep political uncertainty. The country is reeling from a war last year between Israel and the predominately Shiite Muslim militant group, Hezbollah.
Though a cease-fire came into effect a year ago, Israeli strikes in Lebanon have continued, and many fear a new conflict is looming. Israel has recently expressed frustration with Hezbollah’s continued presence in southern Lebanon, and the group’s
leader, Naim Qassem, said on Friday in a televised address that a return to war was possible.
The conflict devastated predominately Shiite pockets of Lebanon in the south, the east and the suburbs of Beirut, with some strikes hitting in or near Christian areas. It sharpened sectarian divisions that were unresolved from the country’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.
Lebanon’s Christians, mostly Maronite Catholics or Orthodox, are one of Lebanon’s three dominant demographic groups, along with Sunni and Shia Muslims. Each holds sway in Lebanon’s fractured politics and comprises about a third of the population.
On Sunday, the pope is scheduled to meet with Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, a Christian; the Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Shiite; and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, a Sunni Muslim.
“The pope has to come with a message of peace, but he also has to come with a message that the Christians in Lebanon have to stay part of the Middle East,” said Naji Hayek, vice president of the Free Patriotic Movement, a major Christian bloc in Lebanese politics. “It is not enough to say we want peace, we need also protection.”
That show of strength is most likely to culminate on Tuesday when Pope Leo offers Mass at Beirut’s port, a once-bustling shipping hub destroyed in 2020 after a stockpile of unsecured explosive material detonated.
The explosion sent a shock wave of death and destruction through Beirut, and the remains of the port, now a derelict hunk of concrete, are a reminder to many Lebanese of the chronic corruption and mismanagement plaguing their country. The pope’s Mass is expected to draw a crowd of thousands.
For decades, Lebanon was seen as a vanguard for Christians in the Middle East. Their ancient presence has survived persecution by the Byzantines, Islamic conquests and the crises and wars that have rocked modern Lebanon.
It is the only Arab country with a Christian head of state and is home to the largest proportion of Christians of any country in the region. It has also been a bulwark for the church in the Mideast.
Despite their relative strength, Lebanon’s Christian communities still fear marginalization.
During the yearlong war between Hezbollah and Israel, many Shiite Muslims fled Israeli bombardment to the relative safety of Christian neighborhoods — an internal migration that, at times, stoked the sectarian divisions that have long plagued Lebanon.
The war left Hezbollah battered, and that has spurred an effort by the Lebanese government to disarm the group and reverse its decades-long project of building power, influence and its own state-within-a-state.
Hezbollah leaders have refused to relinquish their weapons, however, and some Lebanese now fear that the effort to disarm Hezbollah risks igniting a civil conflict.
Since the cease-fire began last year, Israel has continued to strike what it says are Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, with each side accusing the other of violating the terms of the truce.
Christian communities along the Lebanese-Israeli border have expressed concern that, if the cease-fire were to collapse, Israel may seek to create a buffer zone between the two countries, which could displace them.
“Would they allow us to stay, or would they force us out?” asked Najib al-Amil, priest of the parish of Rmeish, a predominately Christian town about a mile from the Israeli border. “If they let us stay, who would we be staying with? In Lebanon or with them? And if they expel us, where would we go?”
Against that backdrop, many Lebanese hope Pope Leo’s visit will reinforce a message of peace to the country’s political leaders.
That message was not just for Christians but “for all Lebanese,” said the Rev. Joseph Moukarzel, a professor of history at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik in Jounieh, Lebanon.
By visiting, said Father Moukarzel, who is a Maronite, Pope Leo will urge citizens to “rebuild your country for justice and dignity and good governance.”
Motoko Rich contributed reporting from Rome, and Dayana Iwaza from Beirut, Lebanon.
Christina Goldbaum is The Times’s bureau chief in Beirut, leading coverage of Lebanon and Syria.
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