VATICAN CITY (CNS): “Dear people of Lebanon, I greatly desire to visit you and I continue to pray for you, so that Lebanon will once more be a message of peace and fraternity for the entire Middle East,” Pope Francis said on August 4 during his general audience at the Paul VI audience hall. The pope was marking the one-year anniversary of a deadly explosion that ripped through the port of Beirut [Sunday Examiner, 16 August 2020].
Pope Francis said Lebanon needs concrete help from the international community—”not only with words but with concrete actions in undertaking a journey of resurrection”—so it can emerge once again as a symbol of fraternity and peace for the Middle East.
“I think above all of the victims and their families, the many injured and those who lost their homes and livelihoods…so many people have lost the desire to go on,” the pope said
In the early evening of 4 August 2020, a massive blast in a port warehouse destroyed large sections of the centre of the capital, killing at least 214 people and injuring thousands more. It displaced 300,000 people.
The explosion—caused by a poorly stored stock of ammonium nitrate fertiliser—was one of the largest non-nuclear blasts in history. Protests had been scheduled in Beirut on August 4 denouncing a lack of justice, transparency and accountability concerning the causes behind the blast and those responsible.
Meeting on August 3, an international support group for Lebanon, made up of world leaders, urged authorities to complete their investigations and bring justice to survivors.
French president, Emmanuel Macron, and United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, were hosting a donor conference on August 4 seeking to raise US$357 million [$2.77 billion] in aid to meet the country’s most urgent needs, providing food, education, health care and clean water.
However, some world leaders have said their help would be conditional on Lebanon establishing a government that can fight corruption. The country’s leadership has been unable to reach an agreement on forming a new government for the past 10 months, delaying reforms and tackling current crises.
Pope Francis said he hoped the conference led by France and the UN would prove fruitful.
The pope recalled the day of prayer for Lebanon, hosted on July 1 at the Vatican, in which leaders of Christian Churches reflected on the hopes and expectations of the people of Lebanon, who are also “tired and disillusioned,” and prayed that God give the “light of hope to overcome this difficult crisis.”
