BEIRUT — The Rev. Issam Ibrahim remembers when citrus orchards surrounded Mar Youssef Maronite church in the southern suburbs of this city, where generations of Catholic families celebrated baptisms, first communions, confession and confirmations.
Then, the transformation came.
Beginning with the Lebanese civil war, and the decades of conflict and economic strife that followed, the area south of Lebanon’s capital underwent sweeping demographic change. Amid violence perpetrated by all sides, the pews of Mar Youssef emptied as Christians left and Lebanese Shiites, a core base of support for Hezbollah, the sprawling political and military group, moved in.
Now, the pews fill up mostly for funerals, Ibrahim said. And when parishioners enter the church hall, they’re greeted not only by a photo of Pope Leo XIV but also, through a window, by a giant mosaic of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor.
Leo arrives in Beirut Sunday as part of his first international trip as pontiff, a five-day tour that began last week in Turkey. In visiting Lebanon, the pope is coming to what was once one of Christianity’s greatest strongholds in the Middle East. But the community has already diminished in this Mediterranean nation, an emblem of wider Christian flight across the region, which is otherwise steeped in the origins of the faith.
Christians remain the largest religious minority in the Middle East and North Africa, according to Pew Research, representing 2.9 percent of its population in 2020, but their share is down from 3.3 percent in 2010. Over the years, they have fled conflicts in Gaza, Iraq and Syria, where another 13-year civil war took a major toll on Christian residents.
Church leaders in Syria estimate that the Christian population there has shrunk from 1.5 million in 2011, when the war began, to about 400,000 now. In Lebanon, Christians made up more than half of the population before the civil war, but now represent about 32 percent.
Lebanese Christians “fled war, they fled violence, and they were forced to sell their properties so that they could go to a safer place,” said Ibrahim, who serves as the area’s parish priest.
In the Middle East, Lebanon remains the single largest bastion of Catholicism. But over the past 10 years, the total number of baptized Catholics here fell from 2.07 million in 2010 to 2 million in 2024, according to Vatican data.
As a result, during his three days in Lebanon, Leo is expected to echo a litany of previous popes who have delivered a singular message to Christians in the Middle East: Please stay. “The darker the hour, the more faith shines like the sun,” he said in an address ahead of his trip, referring to what he described as “daily news about conflicts, disasters and persecutions” in the region.
But the attacks against Christians — including a deadly bombing at a church near Damascus in June blamed on the Islamic State — have underscored the types of threats the already dwindling community is facing.
“Conflicts over resources, rigid religious identities, weak institutions, extremist ideologies and poverty create an environment where Christian minorities can become easy victims of systematic violence,” said Davide Dionisi, Italy’s special envoy for religious freedom. The pope’s trip, he said, would “offer an opportunity to address this issue.”
Leo is traveling in a region still grappling with the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed at least 1,200 people, unleashed Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and led to conflicts in both Lebanon and Iran. In Gaza, Israeli attacks during the war killed dozens of Christians sheltering in the two main churches in Gaza City, and in July, tank fire injured the enclave’s only Catholic priest, Father Gabriel Romanelli, who spoke almost daily with the late Pope Francis throughout the conflict.
Tensions are also rising again on Lebanon’s southern border, as a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah is threatening to collapse, and some here hope Leo’s visit will offer a reprieve. During the conflict last year, Israel pummeled Hezbollah targets in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Mar Youssef still stands. Ibrahim said most of his congregation lives outside the area, but some return on Sunday for mass.
Hezbollah, in a statement, welcomed the Pope’s visit and called on him to condemn Israel’s actions. Earlier, the group’s leader, Naim Qassem, said they were weighing a response to the recent assassination of a top commander.
“War and economic turmoil in Syria and Lebanon have created pressures on people from all religious communities,” said Joshua Donovan, a Middle East historian and former professor at Boston College. He said many fled to well-established diaspora communities of Middle East Christians in the United States, Latin America and Europe, some of which date back over a century.
Donovan said Christians may also have an easier time making a case for asylum because “they can claim that they are in danger because of their faith.”
The Lebanese, in particular, have scattered across the globe, settling down in the United States, Australia, Brazil and other countries. Once armed, Christian militias began fighting each other during the war, and “this is when the Christians … lost hope and they decided to leave,” said Samy Gemayel, a Maronite Christian and member of Lebanon’s parliament, as well as the son and nephew of two civil war-era presidents.
Another place that is visibly losing its Christians is Bethlehem, the Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank where Christians believe Jesus was born. Israeli military restrictions and resulting economic hardship have helped drive a recent exodus, residents say, but the drain has been underway for years. The Christian share of the population has dropped from 85 percent before Israel was founded in 1948 to about 10 percent in 2017, according to the more recent Palestinian census.
“When I see that the number is decreasing, I feel sad for my city, because it’s the birthplace of Jesus,” said Hiba Albabish, 28.
After the Hamas attacks in 2023, Albabish and her brother both lost their jobs in Bethlehem’s tourism sector. “There are barely job opportunities, especially after the war in Gaza,” she said.
Now she’s an English instructor at Bethlehem University. In her current class of 30 students, she said, just two are Christian. She knows many Christians her age who want to leave.
But she said the visit could provide a boost to Christians in the region. “Visits bring hope, because even in darkness, there is still light, and that light is the pope,” she said.
In Syria, Augeen Alkass, archbishop of the Syriac Orthodox Church, echoed Albabish’s hope.
“We are in this land and will stay,” he said. “The message of Jesus emerged from this region and will always stay.”
“I hope the pope’s visit will be a blessing to the believers and will address peace, justice, equality and a better future,” he added.
Haidamous reported from Washington and Faiola reported from Istanbul. Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.
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