Pope Leo XIV: The Land of the Cedar Has Adopted You…!

Your Holiness,

You kindly chose this country of the Levant as your first destination after your election as head of the Catholic Church. We thank you for that!

Your presence here resembled the shadow of a white cloud gliding through a dark sky that has been overcast for far too long, letting its light shine upon this geographical space described in history books as the land of milk and honey, the land of hospitality and conviviality, the land of the eternal Cedar—majestic, strong, and unwavering. A land of encounter and exchange among cultures and diverse communities; a land of life, love, and peace, regularly attacked and often violated.

But for a brief moment, your visit came to “open a parenthesis” and suddenly illuminate the life of an entire people—exhausted and collapsing under the weight of tragedies that have pursued them for decades, mainly caused by the wars of others fought on their soil.

Through your discreet yet firm demeanor, your kindness and reserve, your serene and benevolent gaze filled with wisdom, your simple words, and your strong and deeply felt statements, you managed to enter the hearts of all: young and old, sick and healthy, the honest and the corrupt, patriots and gravediggers of the Republic—in short, the entire Lebanese people, who still live today in emergency rooms, between life and death, in a state of exhausting chaos, constant worry, latent insecurity, and suffocating instability.

You spoke of peace and harmony, you reassured hearts, and reminded everyone of the need to recognize this human solidarity that enriches and strengthens faith and relationships among the citizens of the same nation—a society of light, mutual aid, and support for those most deprived physically and materially. You bore witness loudly and clearly, without ever hurting or offending a weakened and deeply tried people.

Your Holiness, you who breathed a dose of oxygen into all these citizens in distress, allow them to rely on your counsel and your prayers by asking you to continue, even after you leave our small country, to intercede with the Virgin Mary so that peace may take root here—opening the path to recovery and, perhaps one day soon, enabling Lebanon to embrace its “permanent neutrality,” the only guarantee of its stability, sovereignty, independence, and political, economic, social, and cultural flourishing.