In battered Lebanon, an ancient Christian community awaits the new pope

By Ben Wedeman, CNN

(CNN) — The black-clad priest yanked on the white rope. At once the bells began to clang.

The evening mass was beginning at the Monastery of Mar Maroun, or Saint Maroun, in the town of Annaya, high in the Lebanese mountains.

This monastery overlooking the Mediterranean will be one of the stops on Pope Leo XIV’s three-day visit to Lebanon, beginning Sunday.

The congregation on this cool late November evening was modest in number but their voices rang out as they sang hymns – including one in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, the language Jesus is believed to have spoken.

Christianity in Lebanon is almost as old as Christianity itself. Yet the community, with roots so deep in this land, increasingly feels its grip slipping. In recent decades many Christians have left, for the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, Australia and elsewhere.

The last papal visit to Lebanon was in May 2012 by Benedict XVI. Since then, the Lebanese – Christian and Muslim alike – have been through a failed revolution, an economic collapse, the Covid-19 pandemic, the catastrophic Beirut port blast and another war with Israel.

Lebanon has 18 officially recognized faiths and sects. Every event here has a sectarian angle. Pope Leo’s visit is no exception.

“They have become stronger than us,” said Thérèse Hanna, a woman in her seventies, as she left Mass at the monastery.

“They, who?” I asked.

“The Shia,” she replied, adding confidently, “Of course, the Pope knows that.”

Shia Muslims are now Lebanon’s single largest sect. Once the country’s hewers of wood and fetchers of water, the Shia have grown in number, wealth and power. That power is best embodied by Hezbollah, the armed group and now political party that fought Israel for decades, most recently following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, until a fragile ceasefire was brokered one year ago.

The Shia pose the most potent challenge to Christian power in Lebanon, a fact not lost on anyone here. Yet nothing is simple. Hezbollah has formed coalitions with Christian parties in the past. Politics makes strange bedfellows.

The first official papal visit to Lebanon was in May 1997 by John Paul II, when the country was recovering from the ravages of the 1975-1990 civil war. Though still saddled by an Israeli occupation in the south and a Syrian occupation in the rest of the country, it was a time of optimism. Many of those who had fled the civil war (and wars with Israel) were venturing back, aid and investments were pouring in. Beirut was undergoing a mad, haphazard building boom. A new, reinvigorated Lebanon seemed to be rising from the ashes.

After the travails of the last decade, however, that era of hope feels like a distant memory.

The economy is still struggling. Official corruption and mismanagement are still the rule rather than the exception. Yes, with the ceasefire one might conclude that active war with Israel is over, but that’s an illusion.

On an almost daily basis, Israeli warplanes and drones strike Lebanon. Israeli officials claim Hezbollah has not fully withdrawn from its positions along the southern border and that it is re-arming and regrouping. Israel still occupies five strategic locations on the Lebanese side of the border.

A week before Pope Leo was due to land in Beirut, an Israeli air strike on the capital killed 57-year-old Haytham Ali Tabatabai, a senior Hezbollah military commander.

Hezbollah for its part has not fired on Israel since the ceasefire went into effect on November 27 last year.

In Beirut, the joke is that the US-brokered ceasefire means Hezbollah must cease, and Israel can fire.

This is just a small fraction of the complex kaleidoscope called Lebanon where Leo will land on the second leg of his first overseas trip as pope.

The pontiff’s visit will be brief; he will arrive from Turkey on Sunday and depart for Rome on Tuesday. He will meet faith leaders and political leaders and hold a series of events, the largest a Mass on the Beirut waterfront on Tuesday.

There, workers have laid out tens of thousands of shiny white plastic chairs in front of a huge stage. The backdrop of the stage features in French and Arabic the phrase “blessed are the peacemakers,” flanked by the word “peace” in a variety of languages (not Hebrew), and depictions of the cedars of Lebanon.

The waterfront was created after the civil war by dumping thousands of tons of rubble from the ruins of Beirut into the sea. “Not just rubble,” CNN cameraman Charbel Mallo, a native of Lebanon, pointed out when we visited the site. “There are bones here too.”

More than 150,000 people were killed in that war.

Despite it all, this is a land where hope springs eternal.

Outside the Monastery of Mar Maroun, Souad Khoury and her husband Fadi were upbeat about the pope’s visit.

“We’ve been through a lot,” said Souad. “We are a country of faith. We are strong. We are still on the land.”

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