BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Pope Leo XIV arrived in Lebanon on Sunday with a message of peace for the crisis-hit nation, still reeling from a war between Israel and Hezbollah and the conflict’s lingering aftereffects.

The pope had previously visited Turkey, where he kicked off his first overseas tour since being elected leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May.

He told journalists on the plane that the visit to the two countries had “a special theme of… being a messenger of peace, of wanting to promote peace throughout the region”.

Leo was met in Beirut by officials including President Joseph Aoun, the Arab world’s only Christian head of state.

Lebanon rolled out the red carpet and a 21-gun salute for Leo, who was also greeted at the airport by children and a brass band as ships at the port sounded their horns.

Two Lebanese military aircraft escorted his plane on descent.

“I came to say that the Lebanese are one people and we are united,” said Zahra Nahleh, 19, from Lebanon’s war-ravaged south, who was waiting along the road from the airport to welcome the pontiff.

“The pope is not just for Christians but for Muslims too, and we love him a lot,” she told AFP. “We want him to bless our land, we wish he could visit the south.”

The two-nation tour is something of a test for the first American pope, whose understated style contrasts with that of his charismatic and impulsive predecessor, Francis.

Although Leo’s four-day visit drew little attention in Turkey, a Muslim-majority nation whose Christian community numbers only around 100,000, his 48-hour stopover has been eagerly awaited in Lebanon, a religiously diverse country of around six million people.

– Hezbollah scouts –

Long hailed as a model of coexistence, Lebanon since 2019 has been ravaged by successive crises, from economic collapse, to a devastating Beirut port blast in 2020, to the recent war between militant group Hezbollah and Israel, which largely ended with a ceasefire last November.

The last papal visitor was Benedict XVI in 2012.

Christians play a key political role in Lebanon, where the post of president is reserved for a Maronite Christian — but they have seen their numbers dwindle, particularly due to emigration.

Leo was to hold talks with Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and parliament speaker Nabih Berri at the presidential palace, and make a speech to authorities and diplomats at 6:00 pm (1600 GMT).

A group of traditional dancers welcomed him at the entry to the presidential palace despite the rain.

Youth scouting groups affiliated with Hezbollah had waited to welcome the pope along the road in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the Iran-backed militants hold sway and where posters of slain chief Hassan Nasrallah appeared near billboards welcoming the pontiff.

On Saturday, Hezbollah had urged the pope to reject Israeli “injustice and aggression” against Lebanon.

Israel has kept up regular raids on Lebanon, usually saying it is striking Hezbollah targets, despite the truce that was supposed to end more than a year of hostilities, including two months of open war with the group.

– ‘My greatest dream’ –

In Turkey, Leo’s visit was firmly focused on calls for greater unity among different branches of Christianity.

He began his trip on Thursday by holding talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Then he travelled to Iznik to mark 1,700 years since the First Council of Nicaea, one of the early Church’s most important gatherings, which he celebrated at an ecumenical service alongside Patriarch Bartholomew I, leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians.

Saturday saw Leo hold mass in Istanbul with thousands of worshippers braving heavy rain, many of whom had travelled across Turkey for the moving multilingual service.

On his last day, Leo met privately with a bereaved father whose 14-year-old Italian-Turkish son died in February after being stabbed at a market in Istanbul.

He then went to the Armenian Cathedral where he had words of encouragement for the largest of Turkey’s Christian communities — with some 50,000 members — thanking God “for the courageous Christian witness of the Armenian people throughout history, often amid tragic circumstances”.

It was an apparent nod to the massacres the Armenians suffered at the hands of the Ottoman troops in 1915-1916, which has been qualified as genocide by around 30 countries, although Turkey firmly rejects the term.