Pope postpones trip to Lebanon for ‘health reasons’ days after he was seen in a

Pope Francis has postponed a trip to Lebanon initially planned for June over health concerns, Lebanon’s tourism minister Walid Nassar said on Monday.

Nassar did not elaborate on the ‘health reasons’ behind the postponement but the pope, who has suffered from pain in his knee, was seen using a wheelchair for the first time at a public event on Thursday.

Nassar said: ‘Lebanon received a letter from the Vatican officially informing it of the decision to postpone the scheduled visit of the Pope to Lebanon.’

Pope Francis arrived on a wheelchair to meet with participants in the plenary assembly of the International Union of Superiors General at the Vatican on May 5

Pope Francis has postponed a trip to Lebanon initially planned for June over health concerns, Lebanon’s tourism minister Walid Nassar (pictured) said on Monday

He added the Pope’s ‘foreign visits and scheduled appointments have been postponed for health reasons’.

The Vatican had never confirmed the visit but Lebanon’s presidency in April said the 85-year-old pontiff would visit the country in June.

Francis has been suffering for months with pain in his right knee that forced him to cancel numerous engagements and stopped him from presiding over religious celebrations.

The Vatican has not said officially what the problem is, although sources said he has chronic arthritis.

The Pope himself has also spoken of an injured ligament in his knee.

He told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published last week that he would undergo an ‘intervention with infiltration’. 

He was seen again in a wheelchair as he received an audience of students and teachers from the University of Macerata, in Vatican City on May 9

The Vatican has not said officially what the problem is, although sources said he has chronic arthritis 

Meanwhile, just last month the pontiff told a newspaper in Argentina he was treating his knee pain by putting ice on it and taking painkillers.

His visit to Lebanon, following the country’s parliamentary elections on May 15, would have been the third by a pope since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Pope Benedict XVI visited in 2012 to appeal for peace months after the start of the Syrian civil, while Pope John Paul II came in 1997.

Lebanon is home to one of the largest Christian communities in the Middle East and has been gripped by an unprecedented economic downturn since 2019, with more than 80 percent of the population now living in poverty.

Francis, who has received Lebanon’s president and prime minister in the Vatican in recent months, had previously promised to visit the country and…