Pope Says Lebanon Faces 'Extreme Danger' after Blast
Pope Francis used a first public audience in six months Wednesday to warn that Lebanon faces "extreme danger that threatens the very existence of the country" following last month's massive explosion.
The leader of the Catholic Church focused on the disaster-hit country almost a month after the huge blast in the Beirut harbor ripped through the city, killing 190 people and wounding at least 6,500.
"Lebanon cannot be abandoned to its solitude," the pope said at the limited audience with the public, meetings that had been suspended due to the coronavirus crisis.
"A month after the tragedy... my thoughts are still with dear Lebanon and its particularly hard-pressed population," Francis said, holding a Lebanese flag brought to the audience by a young priest.
He called for a universal day of prayer and fasting on Friday, saying that he would send the Vatican's Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin to Lebanon on the day.
"Faced with the repeated tragedies that each of the inhabitants of this land knows, we realize the extreme danger that threatens the very existence of this country," he said.
Describing Lebanom as "a message of freedom and an example of pluralism in both the East and the West," the pope called on religious and political leaders to work together in its reconstruction.
"We cannot allow this heritage to be lost," Francis said.
The pope also pressed the international community to help "Lebanon emerge from a serious crisis without being involved in regional tensions."
Visibly moved by the pope's message, Maronite priest George Breidi, a student at a Catholic university in Rome thanked the pontiff for his support.
The Maronite clergyman, whose Eastern Catholic Church is based in Lebanon, also thanked the pope for "saying that we cannot continue to live like this in Lebanon."
Source: Naharnet, Agence France Presse
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