In a city still marked by the sounds of the 2024 escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, Pope Leo XIV urged Lebanon to rise above violence and division.

BEIRUT (AP) — Pope Leo XIV prayed Tuesday at the site of a deadly 2020 Beirut port explosion that has become a symbol of dysfunction and official impunity and called for justice to prevail, as he offered words of consolation to Lebanon’s people — including in the war-battered south — on the final day of his first overseas trip.

The pope’s visit is a sign of hope,” Rev. Miled Abboud told NBC News. “There are a lot of bleak things, of things that make us despair, but we have Christ who gives us strength to carry on.”

Hezbollah says it urges Pope Leo XIV to reject Israeli “injustice and aggression” against Lebanon, in a message to the pontiff who arrives in Beirut this weekend.

BEIRUT — Pope Leo XIV challenged Lebanon’s political leaders on Sunday to be true peacemakers and put their differences aside, as he sought to give Lebanon’s long-suffering people a message of hope and bolster a crucial Christian community in the Middle East.

Erdogan echoed that Leo’s visit to Ankara came at a “highly critical time” amid wars in the region, referencing Israeli forces’ ongoing attacks in Gaza, and a deadly Israeli strike on the only Catholic church in the Palestinian enclave in July.