The Holy See’s ambassador to Lebanon has appealed for a ceasefire and new negotiations after Israeli strikes across the country left at least 182 people dead and hundreds injured. In an interview with Vatican News, Archbishop Paolo Borgia said Lebanon “desires and deserves” peace and warned that war brings only “death and destruction”.
The strikes were carried out on Wednesday, 8 April, a day after a two-week ceasefire involving the United States, Israel and Iran had been announced. Israel said the truce did not extend to Lebanon or to its conflict with Hezbollah. Archbishop Borgia said the scale of the assault was without precedent in his experience, describing reports of around 10 near-simultaneous strikes in 10 minutes and suggesting that a very large number of Israeli warplanes had been deployed, though he noted that some details still needed verification.
Speaking by telephone after more than 10 hours on mission in the country’s south with the Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Bechara Boutros Raï, the nuncio described a city in upheaval. Beirut, he said, was gripped by traffic, sirens and ambulances, while clashes between Hezbollah and Israel continued and further Israeli raids were expected. He said the death toll might yet rise because many could still be trapped beneath the rubble.
Archbishop Borgia said Lebanon’s position could not simply be folded into the broader ceasefire arrangements elsewhere in the region. Iran and Hezbollah are connected, he acknowledged, but Hezbollah also presents what he called a separate problem for Israel. Even so, he insisted that a truce in Lebanon remained urgently necessary and that negotiations should begin to stabilise the country’s relationship with Israel. A ceasefire, he said, would reopen the door to diplomacy.
He also pointed to repeated calls from Lebanese authorities, especially the President of the Republic, for direct negotiations with Israel as a means of reaching a solution to the war. In doing so, he echoed Pope Leo XIV’s Angelus appeal of 15 March, in which the Pope urged the parties to pursue “avenues for dialogue” capable of supporting Lebanon’s authorities in finding lasting solutions for the common good of all the Lebanese people.
Asked whether Lebanon was living through its darkest hour, Archbishop Borgia replied more cautiously. The country, he said, has endured war for more than 50 years, and each conflict brings its own suffering and destruction. Rather than rank the present moment against earlier catastrophes, he emphasised the cumulative toll of decades of violence on a nation already marked by fragility and division.
The nuncio also spoke of the human cost now visible across the country. In Beirut and elsewhere there are displaced Shiites in acute difficulty, while many Christians have also fled to the capital or to the north. Those leaving the south, he said, are forced to abandon homes, livelihoods and land, with economic life collapsing as villages empty out. Those who remain often do so from attachment to their region, but live with anxiety, uncertainty and a painful sense of isolation.
For that reason, he said, it is essential that people feel the closeness of the universal Church, the Lebanese Church and Pope Leo himself. The Pope’s Easter message to Christians in Debel had been warmly received, Archbishop Borgia said, not only by Christians but also by non-Christians who appreciated Leo’s concern for war-torn communities and his insistence on peace.
When asked whether Pope Leo’s recent call on citizens to urge politicians to reject war could also apply to Hezbollah, the nuncio answered that it was “good for everyone”. Both Hezbollah and Israel, he said, should seek ways of resolving problems and opening “a path of peace and new life in Lebanon”. His own prayer, ahead of the Pope’s peace vigil on 11 April, was that the country might live calmly and serenely once more. Peace, he said, is not defeat or surrender, but a just good that comes from God. “War is only death.”
