The black-robed priest pulled the white rope. Soon the bell started ringing.
Evening Mass was beginning at the Monastery of Mar Maroun, or St. Maroun, in the town of Anaya high in the Lebanese mountains.
The monastery, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, will be one of the destinations of Pope Leo XIV’s three-day visit to Lebanon, which begins on Sunday.
The congregation was modest in number on this cool late November night, but the sound of hymns echoed through the air. It included hymns in Syriac, the dialect of Aramaic that Jesus is said to have spoken.
Christianity in Lebanon is almost as old as Christianity itself. But this community, with its deep roots in this land, feels increasingly losing its power. In recent decades, many Christians have left their countries, including the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, and Australia.
The last papal visit to Lebanon was in May 2012 by Benedict XVI. Since then, Lebanese Christians and Muslims alike have experienced a failed revolution, economic collapse, the coronavirus pandemic, the devastating Beirut port explosion, and a new war with Israel.
Lebanon has 18 officially recognized faiths and sects. Every event that takes place here has a sectarian aspect. Pope Leo’s visit is no exception.
“They have become stronger than us,” said Therese Hanna, a woman in her 70s, as she left Mass at the convent.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Shia,” she answered, before confidently adding, “Of course the Pope knows that.”
Shiite Islam is now Lebanon’s largest single sect. Once the country’s cutters and water drawers, the Shia have grown in number, wealth, and power. Hezbollah is the best embodiment of this power. Hezbollah is an armed group and now a political party that has been fighting Israel for decades, most recently after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, until a fragile ceasefire was brokered a year ago.
Shiites have become the strongest challenge to Christian power in Lebanon, a fact not lost on everyone here. But nothing is easy. Hezbollah has formed coalitions with Christian parties in the past. Politics makes strange bedfellows.
The first official visit by a pope to Lebanon was by Pope John Paul II in May 1997, when the country was recovering from the devastation of the 1975-1990 civil war. It was a time of optimism, although the south was still plagued by Israeli occupation and the rest of the country was occupied by Syria. Many of those who had fled the civil war (and the war with Israel) were returning again, and aid and investment were pouring in. Beirut was experiencing a crazy, unplanned construction boom. A newly revitalized Lebanon seemed to be rising from the ashes.
But after the hardships of the past decade, those days of hope feel like a distant memory.
The economy is still struggling. Corruption and mismanagement among public officials remains the norm rather than the exception. While some may certainly conclude that the ceasefire ends active war with Israel, that is an illusion.
Israeli warplanes and drones attack Lebanon almost every day. Israeli officials insist Hezbollah has not completely withdrawn from its positions along the southern border and is rearming and regrouping. Israel still occupies five strategic locations on the Lebanese side of the border.
One week before Pope Leo was scheduled to arrive in Beirut, an Israeli airstrike on the capital killed Hezbollah leader Haysam Ali Tabatabai, 57.
Hezbollah has not fired on Israel since the ceasefire took effect on November 27 last year.
The joke in Beirut is that a U.S.-brokered ceasefire means Hezbollah must stop and Israel can open fire.
This is just one part of the complex kaleidoscope known as Lebanon, where Leo will land on the second leg of his first overseas trip as pope.
The Pope’s visit will be short-lived. He arrived from Türkiye on Sunday and is scheduled to leave for Rome on Tuesday. He will meet with faith and political leaders and hold a series of events, including the largest mass on Tuesday at Beirut’s waterfront.
There, workers lined up tens of thousands of shiny white plastic chairs in front of a huge stage. The background of the stage features the phrase “Blessed are the peacemakers” in French and Arabic, flanked by the word “peace” in various languages (not Hebrew) and depictions of Lebanese cedar trees.
This waterfront was created by dumping thousands of tons of rubble from the ruins of Beirut into the sea after the civil war. “It’s not just the rubble,” Charbel Malo, a CNN cameraman from Lebanon, pointed out when we visited the site. “There are bones here too.”
More than 150,000 people died in that war.
Despite everything, this is a land where hope forever springs.
Outside the Mar Maroun Monastery, Souad Khoury and her husband Fadi were positive about the pope’s visit.
“We’ve been through a lot,” Suad said. “We are a nation of faith. We are strong. We are still here.”
