Pope’s visit to Lebanon “a possibility”, says Vatican

The Vatican has reacted cautiously to the Lebanese president announcing that Pope Francis would visit his country in June.

“It is a possibility that is being studied,” said the director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, in response to an April 5 tweet from Lebanese President Michel Aoun. 

"Apostolic Envoy Joseph Spiteri informed President Michel Aoun that Pope Francis will visit Lebanon next June," Aoun was quoted as saying in the statement from the president’s office.

“The Lebanese people have been waiting for this visit for some time to express gratitude to His Holiness for his support, and to thank him for the initiatives he has undertaken for the country and for the prayers he has offered for its peace and stability,” the statement said, adding that the exact date and agenda for the visit would be set later.

Early this year, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican's equivalent of "foreign minister", had told ambassadors accredited to the Holy See that Pope Francis plans to visit Lebanon sometime after the Middle Eastern country holds elections in mid-May. 

The archbishop, according to several diplomatic sources, had spent over an hour outlining the results of his own trip to Lebanon from January 31 to February 4. He told them that Francis intends to visit the country "between the legislative elections and the end of the year".  

Visitors  

Pope Francis has met with Lebanon's president and prime minister in the Vatican in recent months.

In November last year, he received Lebanon's Muslim Prime Minister Najib Mikati in the Vatican. "May God take Lebanon by the hand and tell it: 'Get up!'" the Vatican quoted Francis as saying.

Before that in April he met with Lebanon's Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri and announced he is eager to visit Lebanon but set the condition of a stable government to journey there.

This past March 22 he met President Aoun who also spoke separately with the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Gallagher, the Secretary for Relations with States.

“During the cordial discussions in the Secretariat of State, the importance of the good diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Lebanon, which reach their 75th anniversary this year, was highlighted,” said a statement of the Holy See Press Office following those meetings.  

“Attention then turned to the grave socio-economic problems the country is experiencing, and the situation of refugees, in the hope that the aid of the international community, the upcoming legislative elections and the necessary reforms may contribute to strengthening peaceful co-existence between the various religious confessions that live in the Land of the Cedars,” it said.

The pope and the Lebanese president also touched on the “disastrous consequences” of the Port of Beirut explosion of 4 August 2020, especially making reference to the “demand for justice and truth expressed by the families of the victims.”

A month after that disaster that killed 200 people, injured more than 6,500 and left 300,000 others homeless, the pope sent his top aide, Cardinal Parolin, to Lebanon to "express my closeness and solidarity". 

Francis’ desire to visit Lebanon

Francis has said repeatedly that he intends visiting the Middle Eastern country.

One year after the explosion, Pope Francis during the General Audience said: “Dear Lebanese friends, I greatly desire to visit you and I continue to pray for you, so that Lebanon will once more be a message of peace and fraternity for the entire Middle East.”

On his return from Iraq, during the in-flight press conference with journalists the pope revealed that he had promised, in a letter to Cardinal Bechara Raï, the Maronite Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, to make a trip to Lebanon. 

Several popes have visited Lebanon. John Paul II visited in 1997 and Benedict XVI in 2012. Paul VI in 1964 became the first Pope to set foot on Lebanese soil, stopping for an hour in Beirut on his way to the Eucharistic Congress in Bombay, India. 

Pope Francis’ closeness to the Land of the Cedars

On July 1, 2021, the pope hosted patriarchs and heads of the Lebanese Eastern Churches to the Vatican for "a day of reflection on the worrying situation in (Lebanon) and to pray together for the gift of peace and stability".

The prime focus of the July 1 daylong ecumenical meeting convened by the pope was the role of Christians in reviving the Middle Eastern country.

Pope Francis and nine Catholic and Orthodox Church leaders said after three closed-door working meetings that Lebanon "cannot be left prey" to "unscrupulous interests."

Lebanon is "a universal message of peace and fraternity," said Pope Francis, who had earlier also shared his desire to visit the country. 

Pope Francis had also forcefully urged the international community and divided religious and political groups in Lebanon to stop exploiting the Middle Eastern country and help it put an end to its dangerous economic, social and political crisis. 

 "The Lebanese people must be given the opportunity to be the architects of a better future in their land, without undue interference," the pope said last July.

Lebanon has a population of about 6 million people. It has the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East, making up a third of the population. Also, it is the only Arab country with a Christian head of state.

A series of crises

Lebanon has been bogged down in a series of crises since late 2019.

First, there is the political crisis which began with mass protests against the government seen as corrupt and which left the country without a stable government. 

Hariri, a Sunni Muslim politician backed by Sunni Arab-led states, designated as prime minister in October 2020 stepped down in July 2021 over disagreement with President Aoun, the Maronite Christian head of state who is backed by the Iran-backed Lebanese Shia Muslim group Hezbollah. 

Hariri was succeeded by Hassan Diab, an academic who resigned in August 2020 in wake of the Beirut explosion. Diab was then succeeded by Mikati, a businessman and three-time prime minister whose current term ends in May.

With a fragile balance of communities since the creation of Greater Lebanon 100 years ago, the country is governed by a complex system of power sharing between the principal faiths, which some observers see as one of the causes of the current paralysis.

Under the country's constitution, the president is Christian, the prime minister a Sunni, and the parliamentary speaker a Shia.

Lebanese society is largely compartmentalized -- the Sunnis with Saudi Arabia, the Christians with the West and the Shia with Iran. 

The Lebanese are also experiencing an economic crisis. 

Since the start of 2020 with unemployment, Central Bank restrictions on account withdrawals, and a precariously unstable Lebanese pound has seen its value plunge by more than 90 percent. 

About 75 percent of Lebanon's population now lives below the poverty line. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs or seen salaries slashed.

Then there was the August 4, 2020 explosion at the Port of Beirut.

Lebanon is also currently home to more than 1 million Syrian refugees escaping war and violence, making it a country that hosts the largest number of refugees relative to its national population.