Pope Leo XIV concludes historic Middle East visit with emotional appeal for peace in Lebanon and the region, urging gratitude amid suffering.
Newsroom (02/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) On the final day of his six-day apostolic journey to Türkiye and Lebanon, Pope Leo XIV celebrated Holy Mass on Beirut’s waterfront esplanade and delivered a powerful homily blending biblical praise with a direct challenge to a nation battered by crisis.
The Pontiff acknowledged Lebanon’s “rare beauty” – its scriptural cedars, its fragrance immortalized in the Song of Songs – while confronting the shadows cast by the 2020 port explosion, economic collapse, political paralysis and renewed regional violence.
“Gratitude easily gives way to disillusionment,” he warned, yet insisted that authentic Christian hope is born precisely in recognizing “small shining lights in the heart of the night” and “small shoots that sprout forth” even from apparently dead trunks.
The Pope highlighted concrete signs of resilience: the faith transmitted in families and Christian schools, the daily witness of priests and religious, parish outreach, and lay-led charitable initiatives. “For these lights that strive to illuminate the darkness… today we join Jesus in saying: ‘We praise you, Father!’”
Gratitude, he stressed, must not become “introspective and illusory consolation.” Instead, it demands conversion and action: disarming hearts, dismantling ethnic and political divisions, and rekindling the dream of a united Lebanon where, in the words of Isaiah, “the wolf shall live with the lamb.”
Turning to the assembled crowd, Leo XIV issued a direct exhortation: “Lebanon, stand up! Be a home of justice and fraternity! Be a prophetic sign of peace for the whole of the Levant!”
Final Appeal for Regional Peace
At the conclusion of Mass, the Holy Father launched a broader appeal for the Middle East, calling for “new approaches” that reject revenge and violence and open “new chapters in the name of reconciliation and peace.”
He urged Christians of the Levant to remain “artisans of peace, heralds of peace, witnesses of peace,” assuring them: “The whole Church looks to you with affection and admiration.”
Pope Leo XIV also prayed for war-torn peoples across the region, for a peaceful resolution to political tensions in Guinea-Bissau, and remembered victims of a recent fire in Hong Kong. He renewed his plea to the international community and local leaders to “listen to the cry of your peoples who are calling for peace” and to place themselves “at the service of life [and] the common good.”
As the Pope prepared to depart Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport, the Mass on the waterfront marked an emotional capstone to the first papal visit to Lebanon since 2012 and the first foreign journey of Leo XIV’s pontificate during the 2025 Jubilee Year.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Vatican.va
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