Pope Francis greets Lebanese patriarchs
ROME: Pope Francis welcomed Lebanon’s Christian patriarchs to the Vatican on Thursday for a day of prayer.
Francis greeted the dozen clerics in the lobby of the Vatican hotel where he lives shortly ater 8am and together they walked across a small piazza inside the Vatican Gardens and entered St Peter’s Basilica.
There, they stood in silent prayer around the altar, and descended to the tomb of the Apostle Peter underneath to light a candle as a sign of peace.
The small group of churchmen was spending the rest of the morning and aternoon behind closed doors in talks about how to help Lebanon emerge from the crisis.
At the end of the day, Francis presided over an ecumenical service in St Peter’s featuring prayers in Arabic, Syriac, Armenian and Chaldean.
Embatled Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri, who met Francis at the Vatican in April, said from Beirut that he hoped the meeting would be crowned with success by calling on all Lebanese to preserve their coexistence.
“It is no surprise that the pontiff keeps it in his heart through this invite to 10 spiritual leaders with the aim of geting Lebanon through its difficult reality,” he tweeted on Thursday, repeating the words of St John Paul II that “Lebanon is more than a country, it is a message.” The Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, was blunt in explaining the Holy See’s “strong concern about the collapse of the country” during a briefing with journalists last week.
He said Francis had invited the religious leaders to Rome in an acknowledgment that the Christian community had been particularly hard-hit by the crisis.
The crisis, Gallagher said, “risks destroying the internal balance and Lebanon’s own reality, puting at risk the Christian presence in the Middle East.” Noting the potential for Lebanon to fall into conflict, he said the country must be helped economically and to keep the peace, saying it “remains the final vanguard of an Arab democracy that welcomes, recognises and coexists with a plurality of ethnic and religious communities that in other countries aren’t able to live in peace.” “It must be helped to maintain this unique identity, to ensure a pluralist, tolerant and diversified Middle East,” he said.
Francis has said he hopes to visit Lebanon once a government is formed. Gallagher said if that happens soon, Francis could make a trip early next year.