BEIRUT - Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Lebanon Sept. 14, saying that he came "as a pilgrim of peace, as a friend of God and as a friend of men."

In his remarks at a welcoming ceremony at Beirut's airport, Pope Benedict praised Lebanon, with a mixed population of Christians and Muslims, for its distinctive record of "co-existence and respectful dialogue."

But speaking in a country that was devastated by a civil war from 1975 to 1990, the Pope acknowledged that Lebanese society's "equilibrium, which is presented everywhere as an example, is extremely delicate."

"Sometimes it seems about to snap like a bow which is overstretched or submitted to pressures," he said.

The Pope urged Lebanese to do everything possible to maintain this social equilibrium, which he said "should be sought with insistence, preserved at all costs and consolidated with determination."

Earlier in the day, speaking to reporters on the plane from Rome, Pope Benedict addressed some of the turbulence currently afflicting the rest of the Middle East. He praised the so-called Arab Spring, a revolutionary wave that started in December 2010, leading to the fall of dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and currently threatening the government of Syria, just across the border from Lebanon.

The Pope said the movement represented positive aspirations for democracy and liberty and hence a "renewed Arab identity." But he warned against the danger of forgetting that "human liberty is always a shared reality," and consequently failing to protect the rights of Christian minorities in Muslim countries.

Many Middle Eastern Christians fear that revolution has empowered Islamist extremism in the region, increasing the danger of attacks and persecution of the sort that Iraq's Christians have suffered since the fall of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Asked about the current exodus of Christians from civil-war-torn Syria, the Pope noted that Muslims, too, have been fleeing the violence there. He went on to say that the best way to preserve the Christian presence in Syria was to promote peace, among other ways by restricting sales of military arms.

Speaking only three days after the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three of his staff members, the Pope told reporters that he had never considered cancelling his visit to Lebanon out of security concerns, and that no one had advised him to do so.

As war bears down from all sides, Lebanese Christians are waiting for their own Arab Spring. For the Middle East’s most Christian country, spring arrives with Pope Benedict’s visit to Beirut Sept. 14-16.

“The Pope’s visit comes as an important message of peace, not only for the Christians but also for the Muslims of the region,” Issam Bishara, Catholic Near East Welfare Association regional director, told The Catholic Register in an e-mail from Beirut.

With much larger Syria fully engulfed in civil and sectarian war to the north, east and south, fighting has already slipped across the border into Lebanon.

“Lebanon cannot but be affected by what is going on in Syria,” Bishara said.

Despite the raging war in Syria, Lebanese and Vatican officials expect the papal visit to proceed on schedule.

“I know that the visit is very well prepared and the security is under the control of the presidential guard,” said Bishara.

In Beirut on Sept. 15, Pope Benedict XVI will deliver an exhortation based on the 2010 Synod on the Middle East in Rome. The synod gathered bishops and patriarchs of the region with selected bishops from around the world to discuss the future of Christianity in the land of its birth. With a diminishing Christian population, deep divisions along religious lines and the increasing dominance of politicized forms of Islam, the bishops called for an enlarged secularism with room for all religious voices and institutions to contribute to society. Such a transformation has to begin with ideals of citizenship which transcend local allegiances of tribe, clan and family, said the bishops.

Keeping Lebanon at peace is critical for the future of the whole region, said Fr. Youssef Chedid, associate pastor at Toronto’s Our Lady of Lebanon parish.

“Lebanon is a key country in the (Middle) East in which everything that happens in Lebanon will have implications for the whole area, and vice versa,” he said.

Chedid was an expert advisor at the 2010 Synod on the Middle East. He views the Pope’s Sept. 15 exhortation as an opportunity to re-orient the Arab Spring.

“It’s more an autumn than a spring (so far),” said Chedid. “It hasn’t brought good news. It hasn’t brought events of social progress. It didn’t get better after all these revolutions.”

Pope Benedict XVI’s exhortation is an opportunity to change the channel on entrenched regional conflicts, said Chedid.

“We would hope that this exhortation will bring to the whole Middle East a new hope,” he said.
A form of secularism that respects and values the contributions of all religions, where majorities and minorities can speak as equals, is the best hope for Middle Eastern Christians, said Chedid.
“We don’t want to be considered second rate. We don’t want to live in a totalitarian regime. We want democracy that will care for all the social groups,” he said.

Chedid grew up in Lebanon under the rule of the militias. He worries that importing a war from Syria repeats the same mistake of Lebanon in the 1980s.

“It’s the war of outside parties with everyone supporting outside parties,” he said. “They’re doing their fight on our land.”

Countering the tendency for regional wars to seep into Lebanon, the Pope has the opportunity to export a vision of peace from Lebanon to the region, according to Chedid.

“Our hope after the visit of the Pope to Lebanon is that through Lebanon he will speak to all the Arab countries and he will help us to understand each other — to help us to have a good dialogue, not between the strong party and the weak party but between all of us as believers. We will have a dialogue that will care about everything on the social level and also the political level.”

This message matters when gun battles break out between Sunni and Alawite militants across Syria Street in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city, said Bishara. The Alawites are loyal to the Assad family and its regime in Damascus. As in Syria, the Sunnis line up with rebel forces.

It isn’t just Lebanon’s Muslims who are picking sides in Syria’s war.

“Christians in Lebanon have already chosen sides. One group supports General (Michel) Aoun (founder of the Free Lebanon Party) whose allies are the Shiite Hezbollah and Speaker of the House Nabih Berri,” said Bishara. “Another Christian group is loyal to the chief of the Lebanese Forces Samir Geagea, supported by the Sunnite political leaders headed by the previous Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri.”
Aoun’s group is part of the March 8 Movement allied with Syria. Hariri is leader of the March 14 Alliance which opposes Syrian interference in Lebanon.

“The Church leadership in Lebanon, especially Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rahi, has been trying to unify this schism for years — but with very little success,” said Bishara.

So far, all parties want to avoid the kind of militia-led politics that made Lebanon a failed state in the 1980s.

“Going back to the years of war when militias were in charge of Lebanon is very unlikely,” said Bishara. “The leadership of the different political groups have all experienced the devastation resulting from total loss of order by government and also know well that in the end they will all lose.”

Al-Rahi condemned the “so-called military councils of clans and sects” as fighting broke out in Tripoli. Al-Rahi is calling on Lebanon’s central government to exercise full control and maintain its independence.