On November 30, 2025, Pope Leo began a three-day visit to Lebanon. A papal visit had been long in the planning. Pope Francis had wanted to go to Lebanon but was prevented from doing so—first for security concerns and then because of failing health. When Pope Leo arrived in Beirut, he was greeted like a rock star. Jubilant crowds braved torrential rains to welcome him. It was exceptional, even by Lebanese standards.
After meeting with government officials and Christian and Muslim religious leaders Leo turned his attention to the real purpose of his visit: to affirm his solidarity with the people of Lebanon who faced unspeakable hardships for reasons that were out of their control. He encouraged them to stay the course. He urged them not to yield to the temptation to emigrate but to return Lebanon to the vibrant country it once was. He repeated the now famous words of Pope John Paul II: “Lebanon is not just a country, it is a message to the world, a message of peace and brotherhood.” Like John Paul before him, Leo encouraged the Lebanese to build peace, not walls, and to keep Lebanon the precious treasure that it is.
Especially moving were prayers the pope led at Martyrs’ Square in Beirut and a vigil he attended at the site of the 2020 Beirut port explosion, which killed 250 people, injured more than seven thousand, and left three hundred thousand homeless. Again, the message was one of hope, resilience, and encouragement.
On March 2, less than four months after Leo prayed with and for the people of Lebanon, Israel unleashed what it called “Operation Eternal Darkness.” The first bombs fell less than a mile from where Leo had stood. Before day’s end, Israeli fighter jets would drop 160 bombs on targets across Lebanon. Israeli Defense Forces said the operation was in retaliation for Hezbollah missiles fired into Israel during the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.
A second, even more lethal bombing raid began just hours after a two-week ceasefire had been agreed to by the United States, Israel, and Iran. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced after the fact that the ceasefire did not apply to Lebanon. In a video address broadcast throughout Lebanon in October 2024, Netanyahu had warned the Lebanese to “save Lebanon before it plunges into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.” With the bombing of Lebanon, he was making good on his warning.
Initial estimates placed civilian casualties at 1,700, with countless others wounded and displaced by the shelling. After a new wave of airstrikes that began on April 8, Lebanese Civil Defense reported that an additional three hundred civilians had been killed and another 1,100 wounded. As of this writing, more than 1.2 million people—nearly 20 percent of Lebanon’s population—have been displaced since the escalation began in early March.
An early casualty in the war was Fr. Pierre al-Rahi, pastor of St. George Maronite Church in the southern Lebanese city of Qlayaa. He was killed on March 9 while attempting to rescue wounded parishioners. Fr. Rahi had previously told Israeli officials that the people of Qlayaa would not evacuate their village as they had been ordered to. He told the Israelis that the village was entirely Christian, that there were no Hezbollah operatives, and that the people were unarmed. Pope Leo called Fr. Rahi “a true shepherd and martyr who refused to leave his people despite the danger.” The Israeli military now controls more than 20 percent of Lebanon. It has announced its intention to establish a permanent buffer zone north of Israel’s border.
The current wave of violence that has engulfed Lebanon began when Hezbollah forces started shelling Israel in retaliation for the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Tehran. Hezbollah first gained a foothold in Lebanon after the 1982 Israeli invasion, which aimed to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization. Today, Hezbollah constitutes a state within a state that has destabilized and undermined Lebanon’s precarious political and religious balance. The Lebanese don’t need to be told that their country will not regain territorial integrity as long as Hezbollah continues to operate within its borders; they know it well enough. But they also know that past Israeli assaults have only strengthened Hezbollah’s resolve.
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich recently threatened to turn Beirut into another Gaza Strip. On March 6, the former Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid went considerably further. In a televised address to the Israeli public, he remarked that “it might be unaesthetic perhaps, or unpleasant, to scrape away two or three Lebanese villages, but they brought it on themselves, it is their problem, not ours. No one told them to become the host state of a terrorist organization.” This appallingly cynical language overlooks Israel’s role in the creation of Hezbollah. Another former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, came closer to the truth when he famously admitted that “it was our presence there that created Hezbollah.”
Less than four months after Leo prayed with and for the people of Lebanon, Israel unleashed what it called “Operation Eternal Darkness.”
A two-week truce announced on April 7, 2026, immediately began unravelling because of a dispute over its scope. While both the United States and Israel initially claimed victory, the truce was tested by continued Israeli air strikes in Lebanon as well as mounting tensions in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted on X that ongoing Israeli attacks in Lebanon violated the ceasefire framework that President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu had both agreed to. Trump dismissed the claim, asserting that Lebanon was “a separate skirmish” and not part of the truce agreement. This was one of many instances of mixed messages from the White House. Trump posted on Truth Social that if a permanent “REAL AGREEMENT” is not reached during the upcoming two-week pause, the “Shootin’ Starts again.”
While Trump was invoking images of the Wild West, his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, was leading a prayer service at the Pentagon where he used a “Deus Vult” Bible to justify devastating military action against Iran. He presented the conflict as a divinely sanctioned struggle and encouraged those present “to pray for overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” On Palm Sunday, Pope Leo pushed back. He emphasized that “Jesus is the King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war.” He went on to declare, “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.” On Easter Sunday, Trump posted a profanity-laced screed vowing to “annihilate all of Iranian civilization.” Pope Leo called these threats “a profound moral failure.” Trump has since responded to the pope’s criticism in a long Truth Social post in which he urges Leo to “get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.”
The war on Iran has now engulfed the entire Middle East and threatens the global economy. It is a war that Trump has improvised, a war with no clear objectives. The lack of focus and planning are not exceptional when it comes to Donald Trump. But in this case, there is perhaps another reason for the astounding level of incoherence coming from the White House. Could it be that this was not Trump’s war in the first place, but Netanyahu’s? A 2025 Defense Intelligence Agency Report concluded that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States. So how did we get here?
Yes, such a war was bound to appeal to Hegseth’s evangelical messianism and to Trump’s need to project an image of total dominance. But there is more. Netanyahu boasts about having wanted a war with Iran for forty years. Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was a close friend of Netanyahu all the way back in the 1980s, when Netanyahu was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations in New York. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, also has a longstanding family relationship with Netanyahu. Netanyahu has been a close friend and political associate of Jared’s father, Charles Kushner, and reportedly even stayed at the Kushner family home in New Jersey. This is the same Netanyahu who threatened to turn Lebanon into another Gaza and has done his best to make good on that threat. By destroying Lebanon, he is also destroying the last best hope for an end to this disastrous and totally unjustified war.
It is now being reported that Israel is considering a ceasefire with Lebanon following in-person talks between the two countries on April 14. Lebanon is hardly in a position to negotiate. The entire south of the country, including basic infrastructure, is in ruins. Lebanon has insisted on an immediate halt to Israeli airstrikes before substantive talks can proceed. Israel has kept its “finger on the trigger,” as Netanyahu puts it, conducting massive strikes even as diplomatic contacts began, and reasserting that the regional ceasefire does not cover its operations against Hezbollah. The alternative would be for the Lebanese Armed Forces to assume sole responsibility for security in the south. However, this would require massive international funding and training. In the meantime, the two countries remain deadlocked over even the preconditions for a formal ceasefire. Once again, Lebanon is being made to pay the price for circumstances beyond its control.
Reproduced with permission by Commonweal.
