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The Vatican and the global Catholic community, including Lebanon, are currently marking the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate , the declaration promulgated by Pope Paul VI on the Catholic Church’s relationship with non-Christian religions. In Lebanon, a conference was held in Bkerké on November 8 to commemorate the event. The statement has often been called prophetic , and rightly so. It was written at a moment when, despite growing contact between peoples through modern transport and communication, religion was increasingly being used as a tool of violence across the five continents. The culture of religious and racial hatred had reached its darkest point in Europe during World War II, with the Holocaust and the extermination of millions of Jews by the Nazis.

Pope Leo gave the Lebanese what belongs to the Lebanese: recognition of their great resilience. But if we try to read his words on the serious global problem he identified for everyone through Lebanese eyes—let's say Lebanese eyes only, since he addressed these words to the whole world—we would understand that this resilience should be investigated: “A kind of pessimism and sense of powerlessness seem to have taken hold, where people are no longer able to ask themselves what they can do to change the course of history. Major decisions appear to be taken by a select few, often to the detriment of the common good, as if this were an inevitable destiny”.

As Pope Leo XIV visits Lebanon — and with the 30th UN Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, ending with few tangible results — it is worth revisiting the concept of « Integral Ecology », a central idea in Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical « Laudato Si’ ». The document outlines a deeply human and inclusive vision of ecology — one that calls for both spiritual renewal and social justice. The term integral ecology reflects a holistic approach to the relationship between humankind and the environment. It promotes a worldview where environmental, social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions are inseparable. As the French Catholic Church site explains, this concept rests on “the conviction that ecological conversion is not confined to environmental issues alone” but also draws on hope, respect for all life, and a commitment to human dignity and fraternity. The Church, in this view, bears a moral responsibility for the care of Creation.

The “Gathering of Lebanese Shia” sent a message to Pope Leo XIV stating that the Lebanese State’s exclusive control of weapons “is the essential foundation for building a strong and just State.” Supporting peace “in accordance with Arab initiatives and international legitimacy,” the Gathering stressed its commitment to “acting exclusively under the authority of the State and the rule of law, and to supporting everything that strengthens its presence.” The “Gathering of Lebanese Shia” brings together academics, journalists, senior professionals, and Shiite citizens known for their sovereigntist stance, fundamentally opposed to Hezbollah’s political project.

In 1957, the historian and philosopher of history Arnold Toynbee delivered a lecture at the Cénacle Libanais entitled « Le Liban, expression de l’Histoire ». After exploring the complexity of Lebanese history and its interactions with surrounding civilisations, and after analysing how Lebanon—owing to its geographic position and its multi-confessional composition —has long served as a meeting point as well as a battleground for competing religions and identities, Toynbee concluded his talk with a remarkably prescient warning. He said: If, in the Levant, the frontier between the two global empires—American and Russian—were to be drawn along the crest of Mount Anti-Lebanon, the Lebanese Republic would risk sharing the fate of the State of Israel. Like Israel, Lebanon would not be viable if it were to find itself in a permanent state of hostility with its neighbors to the East.

Is it true that a filmmaker essentially explores a single theme—or a single universe—through the whole of their work, in the sense that everything ultimately forms a coherent whole, as Jean-Luc Godard suggested? Guillermo del Toro seems to fit this theory perfectly. The Mexican director, who has just delivered (on Netflix) his own version of one of cinema's most exploited figures—Mary Shelley's Frankenstein —appears driven by a foundational, almost obsessive, even prophetic intuition that is indeed detectable throughout his entire body of work and gives him a rare coherence. For del Toro, the monster is never the monster. Deformed otherness, scarred flesh, unnatural anatomy are never synonymous with actual monstrosity in his work. Quite the opposite: in the Mexican director's vision, the monster is the most human figure of all—one bearing the weight of suffering, loneliness, rejection, humiliation, but also love. Admittedly, he is far from the first to venture onto this terrain. But in an increasingly dehumanized world, his project rings with an even more striking truth.