Lebanon: A Priest's Mission Amid Crisis and War

A diary published in La Croix recounts the daily life of a priest in a ruined Lebanon. Collapsed economy, ruined families, dignity maintained by the Church's charity.

The fact

On July 10, 2026, La Croix publishes a diary of a Lebanese priest whose parish is going through the economic and security crisis that has been hitting the Cedar country since 2019, worsened by the regional war of 2024-2025. "Abouna, can you lend me 300 dollars?" The question, which has become ordinary in his pastoral daily life, shows the extent of the social shipwreck. Public salaries have fallen to less than one hundred dollars a month, savings blocked in banks for six years, Christian families torn between leaving and staying. We had shown, on the occasion of the fragile ceasefire and the joint appeal of the Patriarchs of the Holy Land on July 3, how the Christians of the Levant remained the great forgotten ones of the regional agreements. The diary of this priest gives the daily face of it.

Our reading

Today, the Christians of Lebanon form the only Christian community in the East still enjoying a notable institutional weight, guaranteed by the national pact of 1943 (Maronite presidency, parliamentary seats distributed). The Holy See has long watched over this fragile balance. Saint John Paul II, in the apostolic exhortation A New Hope for Lebanon (1997), recalled the words spoken in 1989: "Lebanon is more than a country, it is a message." This message is today threatened by a massive exodus. The Christian share, majority in 1943, has dropped to about one third of the population, and continues to decrease under the effect of emigration. The concrete charity of the priests in the field, who lend, listen, give, embodies the social doctrine: it refuses the logic of mere institutional aid to maintain the proximity alive. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 2447) includes in the corporal works of mercy the direct aid to the needy, eminent form of fraternal charity. When the State renounces, the Church carries.

To ponder

Remember that the Holy Land includes Lebanon. Support the Œuvre d'Orient, the Franciscan Custody, AED for their work in Lebanon. Pray for the priests who remain, often alone, in the impoverished parishes. "Do not worry about tomorrow: each day has enough trouble of its own" (Mt 6:34). But Christian hope is never fatalism.