Posted on 05/07/2026 10:26:42 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Lebanese Catholic priests serving in the south of the country near the border with Israel said they were overjoyed to discover that a call with Lebanon’s papal nuncio included another special guest on the online visit, Pope Leo XIV…
“First, it was a surprise, then it was a great joy,” Lebanese Maronite Catholic parish priest, Father Toni Elias, told OSV News…
The 13 priests who received a video call serve in Lebanon’s southern villages and towns, including Rmeich, Ain Ebel, Debel and Marjayoun…
“The Holy Father wished to give us good courage in the face of difficulties that our Christian community has faced in these past days. He prayed over us and spoke the benediction,” said Father Elias.
Earlier, Father Elias told OSV News that he and the faithful in Rmeich “100% sense Jesus’ presence and support” as they daily pray together.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicreview.org ...
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Give Pope Leo credit.
Acknowledging what is happening.
All the other “Christians” of the West are either ignoring South Lebanon, denying it, or suggesting they are harboring Hezbollah, so they deserve it.
No credit given from me. He is a pro homo abortion antipope. Actions speak louder than words, Biden and Pelosi still get communion from ‘his’ church even though those demons claim abortion is their most important sacrament.
So one stupid priest actually told the press he was staying and told his people to stay. So he got killed.
And instead of giving him a Darwin award the so called Catholic press is calling him a martyr.
The Vatican has a long history of being anti Jewish and defending dictators like Sadam Hussein. This is partly bribery and partly so the dictators will not kill the local Catholics and this leads to the church pressuring Europe not to remove the dictators
You really want the Pope to send in military forces now?
the fourth crusade went against the express wishes of the Pope - it was redirected by Venice to take revenge for the "slaughter of the Latins" - when the people of Constantinople massacred the Venetians, etc. in their capital
Give Pope Leo credit.
Acknowledging what is happening.
All the other “Christians” of the West are either ignoring South Lebanon, denying it, or suggesting they are harboring Hezbollah, so they deserve it.
The responses on this thread covered every option.
LOL !
Lot of acknowledgement for Nigerian Christians./s
The Pope is quite selective in which Christians he speaks out for. Meaning, he only bothers if there is political or propaganda value for the Globalist Left, as with Lebanon.
Poor guys in South Lebanon have a very low threshold for “great joy”.
i hope they heed Israeli warnings to evacuate when given. staying in a war zone once warned is irresponsible.
None. The sack of Constantinople is considered a turning point in medieval history. Reports of Crusader looting and brutality horrified the Orthodox world; relations between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches were wounded for many centuries afterwards.
What the truth is in that I am not certain, but Constantinople and environs had been under near constant attack, with gradual loss of adjacent lands, for centuries by Muslims.
I would suggest that you may not have heard of the following:
In contrast, the US is "home" - one can be more critical of family than one can be of the enemy.
Leo knows that his criticism of the Trump administration will not lead to the persecution of Christians - in contrast to China, etc.
“the fourth Crusade”
Yes, the 1204 Sack was a tragedy for Church unity — though your statement is incorrect in you framing this as a Papal directive. Pope Innocent III explicitly forbade the attack on Constantinople, threatening the Crusaders with excommunication. He later wrote a scathing condemnation of the ‘works of darkness’ committed there.
The event was largely a geopolitical catastrophe driven by Venetian economic interests and a thirst for revenge. It followed the ‘Massacre of the Latins’ in 1182, where the Constantinople mob slaughtered thousands of Catholics and decapitated the Papal Legate.
The “Sack of 1204” did not happen in a vacuum. In 1182, an anti-Westerners riot broke out in Constantinople.:
- The mob targeted Italians (Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans). Even the sick in the hospital of St. John were murdered in their beds.
- The Pope’s representative, Cardinal John, was decapitated, and his head was dragged through the streets tied to a dog’s tail.
- This event made the “Latins” view the Easterners not as brothers-in-Christ, but as treacherous folks who deserved punishment.
The Crusade wasn’t a Papal mission of conquest, but a hijacked expedition that spiraled out of control due to decades of ethnic and religious tension on both sides.
Pope Innocent III was arguably the most powerful Pope of the Middle Ages, yet his crusaders famously ignored him.
When the army first diverted to the city of Zara (a Christian city), the Pope wrote: “Let no one among you imagine that he is permitted to seize or plunder the land of the Latins... under pain of excommunication.”
When Innocent III learned of the brutality in Constantinople—where altars were smashed and nuns were raped—he was horrified. He wrote to the crusade leaders:
“How indeed is the Greek Church to be brought back into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See, when she has seen in the Latins nothing but an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs?”
Remember WHY this happened - Venice diverted the Westerners - these guys owed Venice $84,000$ silver marks. Doge Enrico Dandolo, who was nearly 90 and blind (allegedly blinded by the Easterners years earlier), used this debt to steer the Crusade toward Constantinople to reinstall a pro-Western Emperor, Alexios IV, who promised to pay the Crusaders’ debt. When Alexios couldn’t pay, the army turned on the city.++
And did you know that the Pope was so angry at the Venetians that he initially kept the excommunication in place against them even after the city fell, only lifting it later under extreme political pressure to try and maintain the new “Latin Empire” in the East.
Pope Leo is not “antagonizing” them out of spite, but rather challenging their military strategies because he believes those strategies are physically destroying the very Christian communities they claim to protect.
Remember that the interventions against Assad, against Saddam etc. badly hurt Christians in the Middle East.
you may say he is “antagonizing” allies, but Leo XIV has been deeply involved in direct pastoral aid to Lebanon - In November 2025, his first major trip was to Lebanon. He visited the tomb of St. Charbel and met with the Maronite Patriarch to signal that Lebanon is the Vatican’s top priority in the Middle East. Just this week (May 6, 2026), he held a surprise video call with priests in southern Lebanon villages near the Israeli border to encourage them to stay with their people, even as they face displacement.
Pope Leo XIV is prioritizing the physical survival of Christians on the ground over the geopolitical victory of Western powers. To you, perhaps, this looks like antagonism. To the Vatican, it is an attempt to prevent the “Iraqi scenario”—where a Western-led war intended to bring freedom ultimately led to the near-total disappearance of the local Christian population.
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