The Vatican announced on Tuesday that Pope Leo XIV will go to Lebanon and Turkey next month, his first trip abroad as leader of the Roman Catholic Church.
The choices signal that the American pope means to press his repeated appeals for peace and diplomacy in the Middle East and to convey his concerns about the Christians who live there.
The Vatican said on Tuesday that the pope will visit Lebanon from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2, after a visit to Turkey. Matteo Bruni, the Vatican spokesman, said that the pope’s itinerary would be announced “in due course.”
President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon, a Maronite and former army general, had invited Leo to visit when the two met at the Vatican in June. During that meeting, the two men addressed “the necessary and pressing need to foster the pacification of the entire Middle East region,” the Vatican said in a statement.
Lebanon is majority Muslim, but has 18 officially recognized religious groups — including 12 Christian denominations, the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East — in a population of around six million, including about two million Syrian refugees.
The Maronite Church, is the largest and most powerful Christian denomination in Lebanon. By convention, the country’s president is always a Maronite.
Since being elected pontiff, Leo has made peace and dialogue a central theme at audiences and in other addresses to the faithful. He has also vowed to actively promote the spirituality and traditions of the Eastern Rite churches, the Catholic communities rooted in the Middle East and Eastern Europe that have struggled to survive during decades of persecution and war.
Benedict XVI was the last pope to visit Lebanon, in 2012. Pope Francis, Leo’s predecessor, who died on April 21, said several times he hoped to visit but never did.
In August, Leo expressed his closeness to “beloved and suffering Lebanon” on the anniversary of the 2020 port explosion that killed more than 190 people, injured 6,000 and caused billions of dollars in damage.
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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