Pope Leo made a fervent appeal to Lebanon’s diverse communities to unite to solve the crisis-hit country’s myriad problems at a Mass on Tuesday attended by tens of thousands, which wrapped up his first overseas trip as Catholic leader.
The first U.S. pope, speaking to crowds on Beirut’s historic waterfront, pleaded for Lebanon’s people to “cast off the armour of our ethnic and political divisions” and address years of conflict, political paralysis and economic misery.
“We must unite our efforts so that this land can return to its glory,” Leo said to a crowd of 150,000 people, according to Vatican figures.
He spoke hours after praying near piles of rubble at the site of a 2020 chemical explosion that shredded parts of Beirut.
Leo has been visiting Lebanon for three days on the second leg of an overseas trip that started in Turkey, in which he has pleaded for peace in the Middle East and warned that humanity’s future was at risk from the world’s bloody conflicts.
The pope is due to leave for Rome with his entourage at about 1:15 p.m. (1115 GMT).
‘Mission Of Peace’
Leo, who has said he is on a mission of peace, has urged the heads of religious sects in Lebanon to unite to heal the country and pressed political leaders to persevere with peace efforts after last year’s devastating war between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, and continued Israeli strikes.
The pope, a relative unknown on the world stage before his election to the papacy in May, has been closely watched as he made his first speeches overseas and interacted for the first time with people outside mainly Catholic Italy.
Crowds gathered at the waterfront hours before the start of Tuesday’s Mass. They waved Vatican and Lebanese flags as Leo toured in an enclosed popemobile, offering blessings as some in the crowd used umbrellas to guard against a strong Mediterranean sun.
Maroun al-Mallah, a 21-year-old student of landscape engineering, arrived at the site of Leo’s Mass before dawn to volunteer and said the visit could be a reset for Lebanon.
“It was lovely to know there was a sign of hope coming back to Lebanon,” Mallah told Reuters.
“Even in university, we just think about what could come next. It’s just pain after pain after pain … especially after the third biggest explosion happened” at the port, he said.
Lebanon Blasts
The 2020 explosion at the Beirut port killed more than 200 people and caused damage worth billions of dollars, but an investigation into the cause has been stymied, and no one has been held to account.
Leo prayed at the site, laid a wreath of flowers at a memorial and greeted about 60 blast survivors and relatives of the victims from different religions, holding up photos of their lost loved ones.
He gave them each a rosary in a pouch decorated with his coat of arms. One woman sobbed as she greeted Leo and asked if she could give him a hug. He nodded, and they embraced.
Cecile Roukoz, who lost her brother in the explosion, said Leo “will raise his voice for justice, and we need justice for all the victims”.
Leo also visited a psychiatric hospital on Tuesday, run by nuns of the Franciscan order.
Lebanon, which has the largest proportion of Christians in the Middle East, has been rocked by the spillover of the Gaza conflict as Israel and Hezbollah went to war, culminating in a devastating Israeli offensive.
The country, which hosts 1 million Syrian and Palestinian refugees, is also struggling to overcome a severe economic crisis after decades of profligate spending sent the economy into a tailspin in late 2019.
(with inputs from Reuters)
