On Heels Of Sarajevo, Pope Heads To Beirut

The image will be familiar: a frail Pope John Paul II celebrating Mass amid the rubble of battle.

After visiting Sarajevo last month, the pontiff travels this weekend to Beirut - another war-ravaged city that became a symbol of mindless strife.

His visit to Lebanon has an added dimension. Nearly half of the city’s 3.2 million population is Christian, making it an outpost for the religion in the mostly Muslim Middle East.

John Paul has long been trying to get there.

As early as 1982, he expressed a desire to go to Lebanon, “the center of so much suffering.” But the country’s 1975-90 civil war kept him away for years, and a planned 1994 trip was canceled because of a terrorist bombing of a church.