Young Lebanese congregate to greet Pope Leo XIV on his visit

(1 Dec 2025)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bkerke, Lebanon - 1 December 2025
1. Various of Lebanese youth gathering outside Bkerke Maronite Catholic Patriarchate, waving Lebanese and Vatican flags
2. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Clarita Kassarji, young pilgrim:
“I am so excited, and tense. At the end what is going on is something international. It is the first apostolic visit for the Pope. Lebanese needs this."
3. Various of Lebanese youth gathering, holding Vatican flags
4. Mid of nuns holding flags singing
5. Mid of gathering
6. Pan of gathering
7. Cross on top of the Bkerke Maronite Catholic Patriarchate
8. Pilgrims outside the Patriarchate
9. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Christina Bshara, young pilgrim:
“I hope that the peace we are currently enjoying will continue after the Pope's departure.”
10. Wide of gathering
STORYLINE:
Thousands of Lebanese youths gathered on Monday at the Maronite Catholic Patriarchate in Bkerke, north of Beirut, to welcome Pope Leo XIV ahead of his arrival.

Youths sang religious songs and waved Vatican flags as the waited for the pontiff, who was due to meet youth groups there.

Leo arrived on Sunday in Lebanon from Turkey where he opened his first trip as pope.

In his opening speech, Leo challenged Lebanon’s political leaders to put aside their differences and work to be true peacemakers, while also urging Lebanese Christians in particular to remain in the country.

Today, Christians make up around a third of Lebanon’s 5 million people, giving the small nation on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East.

A power sharing agreement in place since independence from France calls for the president to be a Maronite Christian, making Lebanon the only Arab country with a Christian head of state.

Lebanon’s Christian community has endured in its ancestral homeland even as the rise of the Islamic State drove an exodus from communities in Iraq and Syria that dated to the time of the Apostles.

While the Christian exodus in Lebanon has been at a slower trickle after the main flight during the civil war, emigration remains a concern for the Vatican, which sees the Christian presence here as a bulwark for the church in the region.

AP video by Ali Sharafeddine

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