“Departing is often more difficult than arriving,” Pope Leo XIV said as he prepared to leave Lebanon on December 2, concluding the first international trip of his pontificate.
On his final day in Lebanon the Pope visited a hospital, prayed silently at the site of the devastating explosion at the port of Beirut, and celebrated Mass at the city’s waterfront for a congregation estimated at 150,000.
“The beauty of your country is also overshadowed by the many problems that afflict you,” the Pope told his Lebanese congregation. Among those problems he listed “the fragile and often unstable political context, the dramatic economic crisis that weighs heavily upon you and the violence and conflicts that have reawakened ancient fears.” He encouraged them to respond with “a transformation of the heart, a conversion of life and a realization that God has made us precisely to live in the light of faith, the promise of hope, and the joy of charity.”
Pope Leo said that he had traveled to Lebanon as “a pilgrim of hope, imploring God for the gift of peace.” He urged the nation’s people to work and pray for peace, saying that “the Middle East needs new approaches, in order to reject the mindset of revenge and violence.”
Later in the afternoon the Pontiff traveled to the Beirut airport, where Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun joined him for a farewell ceremony before the return flight to Rome.