How recent popes have accompanied Lebanon’s difficult path

Here, we offer a look back on these previous apostolic trips to the Land of the Cedars between 1964 and 2012.

Sometimes overlooked in the list of countries visited during his pontificate, Lebanon was not the subject of a real official visit by Paul VI. However, his plane landed in Beirut on December 2, 1964, on its way to the Eucharistic Congress in Bombay, India. This brief visit to Lebanon was thus a complement to his historic trip to the Holy Land the previous January.

Despite the very brief nature of this stopover, a large crowd gathered around the airport in the Lebanese capital to try to catch a glimpse of the Pope. Welcomed by President Charles Helou, the Italian pontiff delivered a brief speech emphasizing that the country of the Cedar “holds its place with honor in the concert of nations.”

“Its history, its culture, and the peaceful nature of its inhabitants have earned it, it can be said, general esteem and friendship,” said Paul VI, in a context where Lebanon was seen as an island of relative stability and prosperity in the Middle East.

This moment remains associated with a golden age for the country, which had been independent for some 20 years and was sometimes referred to as “the Switzerland of the Middle East.”

More than three decades after Paul VI's visit, the atmosphere was very different when John Paul II traveled to Beirut on May 10 and 11, 1997. The country had been ravaged by 15 years of civil war (1975-1990) and was still occupied by the Syrian army.

During this short visit, concentrated in the Lebanese capital, the Polish pontiff had to exercise diplomatic tact to avoid reopening still-raw wounds, in the context of a Syrian occupation that wouldn’t end until 2005.

A year and a half earlier, from November 26 to December 14, 1995, John Paul II had convened a special Synod on Lebanon in Rome, involving all the Lebanese Churches as well as Muslim delegates. The participants in this unprecedented assembly referred to Lebanon as a country of “cultural pluralism,” calling for the establishment of a “consensual democracy” and expressing their desire for “the departure of Syrian troops.”

The synod fathers affirmed that “nothing is more demoralizing for the Lebanese people than the feeling that they are no longer masters of their own destiny.”

In the weeks leading up to John Paul II's arrival, the Polish pontiff's visit did not meet with consensus among the political class. In a virulent statement reported by L'Orient-Le Jour, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt called for “mistrust of the Vatican, as a state that in the past supported dictatorships in El Salvador and Brazil, acted against communism in Poland, and is opposed to the social left throughout the world.”

John Paul II had a short stay in Beirut, which took place in a gloomy and oppressive political climate. Although physically weakened, he still managed to offer gestures and words of encouragement that would contribute to the reconstruction of Lebanon. He used the expression “country-message,” a term frequently evoked thereafter when the Holy See sought to support the Land of the Cedars.

“Indeed, it is your task to pull down the walls built up during the painful periods of your nation’s history; do not build new walls in your country,” he asked Lebanese young people, many of whom would participate three months later in World Youth Day in Paris.

“It is your task to build bridges between people, between families and between the different communities. In your daily life, may you achieve works of reconciliation in order to pass from mistrust to trust!" he told them.

The Pope's visit also allowed the then Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir (1920-2019), to strengthen his moral and unifying authority in this fractured country.

In September 2012, the German pontiff traveled to Lebanon for a trip following the Synod of Eastern Churches held two years earlier in Rome. The formal signing of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente was the main reason for this trip.

On September 14, on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, he presented this text to the Eastern patriarchs gathered in the Basilica of St. Paul in Harissa, in a context of great concern for the survival of Christian communities in the region.

Between 2010 and 2012, the Arab revolutions had shaken up the region's geopolitics. The fall of the authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia was met with as much enthusiasm in the West as it was with skepticism among many Eastern Christians, who were concerned that Islamists would fill the political vacuum.

In Lebanon, in particular, the echoes of the Syrian civil war, which was then spreading, naturally caused great concern. At the end of the summer of 2012, the situation led to rumors that the papal trip would be canceled. But in the end, Benedict XVI was welcomed with great warmth, even in neighborhoods controlled by Hezbollah.

The trip was a real popular success, well beyond the Christian communities alone. “It is time for Muslims and Christians to come together so as to put an end to violence and war,” said the German pope during his meeting with young people gathered at the Maronite Patriarchate in Bkerké, in the presence of the head of state, Michel Sleiman.

This visit to Lebanon was Benedict XVI's last apostolic journey before his resignation. He met with Cardinal Sfeir in the unusual role of “patriarch emeritus,” the latter having retired at the age of 91 when the office of Maronite patriarch was theoretically held for life. This fact may have played a role in the German pontiff's decision to retire a few months later.

Pope Francis, for his part, was unable to visit Lebanon despite a planned trip in June 2022 that had been announced by local authorities. In addition to his deteriorating health, political difficulties related to the failure to replace President Michel Aoun at the end of his term on October 31 prevented Francis from carrying out this project.

The election of Joseph Aoun as president on January 9, 2025, allowed the new head of state to extend an invitation to Leo XIV during their meeting after the new pontiff's installation mass on May 18.

By visiting Lebanon on his first apostolic trip, from November 30 to December 2, Pope Leo XIV is sending a strong signal of his attention to Lebanon's unique situation and to maintaining the Christian presence in the Middle East, in line with his predecessors.

He’s also bringing his message of “unarmed and disarming” peace — words that marked his first speech from the loggia of St. Peter's on the day of his election — to a very unstable region.