Abby Sewell

The patriarch of one of the most important Christian churches in the Middle East retired on Tuesday, setting the stage for new leadership as war engulfs the region.

Pope Leo XIV will pray at the site of the 2020 port blast in Beirut that killed over 200 people and compounded Lebanon's economic and political crisis during his first foreign trip as pope next month that will also take him to Turkey to mark an important anniversary with Orthodox Christians.

A prominent Iraqi Christian religious leader who left Baghdad amid a political dispute last year returned to the capital this week at the invitation of the country's prime minister after nine months of self-imposed exile in northern Iraq's Kurdish region.