Lebanon wants Israeli forces to withdraw from its territory, and Pope Leo xiv signaled his support for it after meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun yesterday. Prophecy shows that this alliance with the Vatican poses a greater security threat to Israel than Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.

• Aoun expressed serious concerns that Israeli forces are refusing to withdraw from Lebanese territory in keeping with a United States-brokered deal between Israel and Lebanon. He failed to mention that his government has not disarmed Hezbollah.
• He also urged the pope and Vatican officials to use diplomatic means to stop Israeli attacks against civilians, infrastructure and villages.

Handcuffing Israel: The pressure from the Vatican and from Lebanon on Israel hinders its fight against a powerful, proximate terrorist group that has killed hundreds of Israelis over the course of decades.

A forming alliance: This was Aoun’s second private audience with the pope at the Vatican. He also met with the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin and the Vatican secretary for relations with states and international organizations, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher. For more than a decade, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has said that Lebanon’s Catholic ties will draw it into an alliance with Europe against Israel. In 2014, he wrote:

Lebanon is the only Middle Eastern country with a strong Christian population. Forty percent of Lebanon’s people belong to a Christian denomination; the largest is the Catholic-affiliated Maronite Church. By constitutional decree, the president of Lebanon must be a Maronite. … This heavily Christian population makes Lebanon different from the rest of the Arab world. … Because of its high population of Christian Arabs, Lebanon has become a linchpin for the Psalm 83 alliance.

Psalm 83 prophesied that Germany would ally with Turkey and various moderate Arab groups—against Israel. To learn about Lebanon’s part in this alliance, read “The Fall and Rise of Lebanon.”