Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Pope Benedict Visits Lebanon Amid Tumult

Pope Benedict arrives in Lebanon on Friday to bring a message of peace to a region torn by civil war in neighbouring Syria and strained by violent Islamist protests against the United States in Libya and Egypt.

While those tensions overshadowed preparations for the religiously sensitive visit, security was low-key in Beirut and the only protests – against a film denigrating the Muslim Prophet Mohammad – were due to take place far from the capital.

Even the militant Shi’ite movement Hezbollah has hung b anners along the airport highway greeting Benedict with a picture of him and texts in Arabic and French saying: “Hezbollah welcomes the pope in the homeland of coexistence”.

Nearby, the movement – which Israel and the United States consider a terrorist group – put up Arabic-only banners for local consumption with a different message: “Welcome to you in the homeland of resistance.”

In Christian districts of the capital, pictures of the 85-year-old pope were plastered in every street and church bells rang out on Friday morning.

“The pope is with us,” was the headline in Al-Nahar newspaper, which said more than 5,000 military and security personnel were being deployed to protect the pontiff. Beirut airport was due to close to all air traffic for two hours shortly before his arrival at 1.45 pm (1045 GMT).

Beirut-based Samir Khalil Samir, a leading Catholic expert on Islam, did not expect major security problems despite anti-U.S. protests in Libya, Egypt and Yemen because he said all Lebanese communities saw the trip as a gesture of peace.

“He will bring a spiritual message – one with political consequences, of course, but spiritual,” he told Reuters.

Benedict, on his fourth trip to the Middle East as pope, will stress unity among the different Christian churches in the region and peace between Christians and Muslims during the visit, which will be restricted to Beirut and its surroundings and end on Sunday.

He will also urge Christians not to leave the Middle East, the birthplace of the faith that they have been steadily abandoning in recent decades to escape wars, political unrest and discrimination by the region’s majority Muslims.

On Friday, Benedict will issue a document along these lines known as an “apostolic exhortation”, based on discussions among Catholic bishops at a Rome synod on the Middle East in 2010.

He will also hold two major open-air events and meet leaders of all Lebanon’s many Christian and Islamic communities, as well as the country’s political leaders.

Christians now make up about five percent of the Middle Eastern population, down from 20 percent a century ago. If current pressures and their low birth rates continue, some estimates say their 12 million total could be halved by 2020.

The pope’s message of peace will especially be aimed toward Syria, whose border is only 50 km (30 miles) away and where an opposition group says more than 27,000 people have been killed in an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Clashes have occasionally spilled over into Lebanese territory, evoking fears of further fighting in a country still recovering from the sectarian civil war that raged from 1975 until 1990.

Tensions have been rising between Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims, who generally back the uprising led by Syria’s Sunni majority, and Shi’ites who usually support Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

About two-thirds of Lebanon’s Christians are in full communion with the Vatican, either as members of the five local churches linked to Rome – the Maronites, the largest group, and the Greek Melkite, Armenian, Syriac and Chaldean Catholics – or of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church itself.

There are also five Orthodox churches – the Greek, Armenian, Syriac, Assyrian and Coptic Orthodox – and small groups of Protestants, mostly Presbyterians and Anglicans.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.