Remembering Beirut’s Port Disaster

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic strangled the world in 2020, the people of Beirut suffered another tragedy: a massive explosion in the port area of the city, caused by the detonation of a stockpile of ammonium nitrate that had been stored improperly. 
 
The disaster is considered one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in global history: 245 people died, 6,000 were injured. The previous year, poverty had tripled from 8 percent to 23 percent, and the socioeconomic consequences of the blast pushed many Lebanese into poverty.
 
Five years later, on 4 August, Lebanese gathered for a prayer vigil with Archbishop Paolo Borgia, the apostolic nuncio to Lebanon, to remember the victims and encourage the government to conclude its investigations, which he said were “still in a preliminary phase.”
 
The vigil, which gathered the injured and the families of the deceased, took place in the square in front of the Church of Notre Dame de la Deliverance, in one of the areas hardest hit by the blast. 
 
“These deaths still have no clear cause or explanation, and that weighs heavily on the entire country,” the archbishop told Vatican News. He said the families of the victims “need justice and truth about what happened.”
 
“There were also some testimonies, followed by a silent march to a garden along the road to the port, where in recent days 75 trees bearing the names of victims were planted,” he said.
 
Archbishop Borgia also read a message from Pope Leo XIV, sent through Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s secretary of state. The message said that Christ’s tears “are joined with ours in the face of loss and suffering,” and the pope assured the people of Lebanon of his prayers.
 
Last August, Pope Francis met at the Vatican with family members of those who were killed in the explosion.
 
“Our heavenly Father knows each of them; their faces are before him,” he told them in a message. “All of us know that the issues are complex and difficult, and that opposing powers and interests make their influence felt. Yet truth and justice must prevail over all else.”
 
After the explosion, Catholic Near East Welfare Association supported Lebanon’s recovery, funding repairs at local health care facilities, including Geitaoui Hospital, located less than a mile from the blast epicenter, which sustained $7 million worth of damages. CNEWA also funded education, medical care and food assistance among those left in need after the blast.