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Pope Leo XIV concluded his three-day visit to Lebanon with a silent prayer at the site of the Beirut port explosion and demanded justice for the victims.
He also met with some relatives of the 218 people killed in the August 4, 2020 explosion that destroyed much of the capital.
Later, the pope said he was “deeply moved” by his visit to the port and shared “the desire for truth and justice among many families across the country.”
No one has yet been held responsible for the disaster, which triggered an explosion of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had been stored unsafely in a port warehouse for nearly six years.
It is widely believed that officials and politicians were aware of the presence of the flammable chemical and the dangers it posed but failed to protect, remove or destroy it.
Relatives of victims and activists say domestic investigations into the disaster have been hampered by political leaders trying to shield those responsible from scrutiny.
Cecile Roukoz, whose brother Joseph was killed, said it was “very important” for the pope to visit the monument. “We know he spoke out for justice and we need justice for our brother and all the victims of this explosion,” she added.
“He was trying to help us find the truth in some way, in his way, maybe praying, maybe just looking at us… We, these families, now, five years later, we need people to look at us,” said Tatiana Hasruti, who lost her father Ghassan in the explosion.
After praying at the scene of the explosion, the pope celebrated the last Mass of his trip in front of about 150,000 people who gathered on Beirut’s waterfront.
Addressing the crowd, he lamented that Lebanon’s beauty was “overshadowed by poverty and suffering, the trauma of your history.”
But he called on the country’s different communities to come together to solve the problem.
“Let us shed the armor of ethnic and political divisions, open up our religious beliefs, engage with each other, and reawaken in our hearts the dream of a united Lebanon,” he said. “A Lebanon where peace and justice prevail, and where all people see each other as brothers and sisters.”
The small country has been plagued by multiple crises since the pope’s last visit in 2012.
In 2019, the country suffered one of the worst economic depressions in modern times, pushing millions into poverty.
Then came massive anti-government protests, the coronavirus pandemic, and then the Beirut port explosion.
Political paralysis has prevented the country from passing the economic and structural reforms demanded by foreign donors in exchange for billions of dollars in aid.
Lebanon was later devastated by a 13-month war between the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement and Israel, which killed 4,000 Lebanese and 120 Israelis.
A ceasefire a year ago ended the conflict, but Israel continues to attack targets it says are linked to Hezbollah, accusing the Iran-backed group of trying to rearm.
