Pope Leo bade farewell to Lebanon on Tuesday with a fervent appeal to leaders across the Middle East to listen to their people’s cries for peace and to change course away from the “horror of war”.
The first US pope wrapped up his first overseas trip as Catholic leader by addressing 150,000 people at a Mass on Beirut’s historic waterfront, where he pleaded for Lebanon to address years of conflict, political crises and economic misery.
Leo said the region as a whole needed new approaches to overcome political, social and religious divisions.
“The path of mutual hostility and destruction in the horror of war has been travelled too long, with the deplorable results that are before everyone’s eyes,” Leo said. “We need to change course. We need to educate our hearts for peace!”
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 proliferating conflicts.
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.
In Lebanon, he urged the heads of religious sects 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.
He also asked the international community “to spare no effort in promoting processes of dialogue and reconciliation” and asked those with “political and social authority” to “listen to the cry of your peoples who are calling for peace”.
In remarks at Beirut’s airport moments before taking off for Rome, Leo made his first apparent reference to Israeli strikes, saying he had been unable to visit Lebanon’s south because it is “currently experiencing a state of conflict and uncertainty”. “May the attacks and hostilities cease,” he pleaded. “We must recognise that armed struggle brings no benefit.”