Pope Leo XIV urged thousands of young Lebanese on Monday to reject the cycle of retaliation that has long shaped their country’s turbulent history, telling them that only love, not vengeance, can rebuild a nation battered by conflict, political paralysis, and economic collapse.

“The true opposition to evil is not evil, but love,” he told some 15,000 youths gathered outside the Maronite Patriarchate in Bkirki, calling on them to help heal Lebanon through reconciliation, service, and renewed faith.

He noted that Lebanon’s young generation has endured some of the harshest years in the country's modern era: a devastating financial meltdown, the catastrophic 2020 Beirut port explosion, and the 2023–2024 border war between Hezbollah and Israel. The cumulative impact, he said, has driven mass emigration and left deep emotional and social wounds.

Pope Leo acknowledged the anxiety of a generation that feels it has inherited “a world torn apart by wars and disfigured by social injustice,” yet insisted that the foundations of renewal remain intact.

“You have time to dream, to plan, and to do good. You are the present, and the future is already taking shape in your hands.”

Invoking Lebanon’s iconic cedar, he said the country “will flourish once again, beautiful and vigorous like the cedar,” but only if renewal is rooted in something deeper than political arrangements.

“The true principle of new life is the hope that comes from above. It is Christ himself. He, the Living One, is the foundation of our trust.”

Peace, he said, cannot emerge from partisan bargaining.

“It is only genuinely sincere when I do to others what I would like them to do to me. Forgiveness leads to justice, which is the foundation of peace.”

He urged young people to make compassion a daily habit, saying that nothing reveals God’s presence more clearly than concrete acts of love toward “friends and refugees and enemies,” and toward “those near and far.”

Pope Leo invoked the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi — “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace” — assuring the crowd that “the Lord will always be with you, and you can be assured of the support of the whole Church.” He entrusted them to the Virgin Mary.

During the youth event, the pope listened to testimonies illustrating both Lebanon’s suffering and its resilience: two volunteers who described the solidarity that followed the 2020 port blast; a young man who decided to remain in Lebanon despite its crippling economic crisis; and a mother and daughter who sheltered a Muslim family during heavy bombardment.

Two young participants then asked the pope how to preserve peace amid instability and how to maintain meaningful relationships in an increasingly superficial digital age.

On peace, the pope said it must be lived, not theorized.

“It cannot be just an idea, contract or moral principle,” he said. “The true principle of new life is the hope that comes from above: it is Christ himself!”

He stressed that “peace is not authentic if it is the product of partisan interests,” and that lasting reconciliation requires courage.

“No peace without justice, no justice without forgiveness,” he said, quoting Pope John Paul II: “This is indeed true: forgiveness leads to justice, which is the foundation of peace.”

Turning to relationships, he warned that self-interest can erode genuine friendship, reducing it to a form of “selfish satisfaction.” True friendship, he said, “places ‘you’ before ‘I,’” allowing people to “build a greater ‘we,’ open to society as a whole and to all of humanity.” Such bonds, he added, must be rooted in God and sustained by trust and a sense of “forever,” which he called “the beating heart of every vocation to family life and religious consecration.”

He urged the youth to cultivate a strong spiritual life, saying that in a world full of noise and vanity, they must “take time each day to close your eyes and look only at God. He sometimes seems silent or absent, but reveals himself to those who seek him in silence.”

Concluding his address, Pope Leo encouraged the young people to live the prayer of St. Francis: “Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, unity; where there is doubt, faith; where there is error, truth; where there is despair, hope; where there is sadness, joy; where there is darkness, light.”

“May this prayer keep the joy of the Gospel and Christian enthusiasm alive in your hearts,” he said. “When the Lord dwells in us, the hope he gives us bears fruit in the world.”