Lebanese Catholics yearn for the upcoming visit of Pope Leo XIV to achieve something lost in recent years. Signs bearing the pontiff’s photo along newly rebuilt roadways express their longing: “Lebanon wants peace.”
Indeed, Pope Leo comes as pilgrim of peace, with the motto for his visit to Lebanon taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.'”
Pope Leo’s choice making Lebanon his first pastoral visit after marking the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in Turkey — underscores the importance the Vatican places on its influential Catholic community in the Middle East, Catholic leaders said of the Nov. 30-Dec. 2 papal trip.
But they added the pontiff also recognizes the need to undergird its Christian community as war, economic crisis and deadly disasters have taken a huge toll on the tiny Mediterranean country recently.
“This is a critical moment for Christians in all the Middle East; not only Lebanon,” said Michel Constantin, who is Catholic Near East Welfare Association-Pontifical Mission’s regional director for Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.
“Lebanon is still the only place in the region where Christians have a substantial presence in politics, governance, and economics. The president and army chief are Catholic, while Christians have a big say in the judicial system. Although they have lost a lot and they are still losing,” he told OSV News.
The Maronite Catholic Church is the largest and most powerful Christian denomination in Lebanon. By convention, the country’s president is always a Maronite.”While the Maronite community is prominent in Lebanon and it has contributed to the country since 1920 until now, the pope is coming to visit the Catholic family together, a visit for the whole church,” Father Jean Younes, secretary general of the Assembly of Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops of Lebanon, told OSV News.
