Harissa, Mount Lebanon, Lebanon · 1908
Above the Bay of Jounieh, eight hundred meters above the Mediterranean, a colossal white statue of the Mother of God stretches her hands open over Lebanon. She has stood here since 1908, watching over a country that has known many wars and many partings — Maronites and Melkites, Orthodox and Latins, Christians and Muslims, all of whom have looked up at her from the sea below and called her by her ancient title: Sayyidatna Maryam, Our Lady of Lebanon.
The White Madonna of the Mountain
In 1904, on the fiftieth anniversary of the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, the Maronite Patriarch Elias Hoyek and the Apostolic Nuncio in Lebanon — together with thousands of the faithful — vowed to erect a sanctuary to honor the Mother of God on the mountain of Harissa, overlooking the Mediterranean. The land was acquired; a great bronze statue of Mary was commissioned, painted white, and placed atop a stone tower at the summit.
On the eve of the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1908, the statue was solemnly blessed. From that day, Lebanon’s patroness has watched over her country from above. Pilgrims have come on foot up the steep road of the mountain; in 1965 a basilica was added beside the statue, and in 1995 a great church of glass and concrete in Maronite-modern style was consecrated to enclose the prayer of pilgrims protected from the sun and the wind.
Through the long Lebanese civil war, through the bombings of southern Lebanon, through the catastrophe of the Beirut port explosion in 2020, Our Lady of Lebanon has remained on her summit. Pope Saint John Paul II prayed there in 1997. The Lebanese diaspora across five continents looks to the white statue on the mountain as a sign of home.
The Sanctuary Today
A funicular railway and a winding road both reach Harissa from the coast. The sanctuary is a stone esplanade open to the sea, with the great white Madonna at its center, her hands open. The basilica behind her is one of the largest churches of the modern Middle East.
Lebanon’s Christians are not the country’s majority — the country is roughly half Christian and half Muslim — but Our Lady of Lebanon is honored even by many of her Muslim neighbors. The sanctuary is a place of interfaith pilgrimage in a country that has paid an immense price for the question of how to live together. From her mountain, she has not stopped watching.
A Prayer at Lebanon
Our Lady of Lebanon,
Mother on the white mountain,
you whose hands have been open over your country
through every war and every parting —
pray for Lebanon today.
Pray for the cedars and the sea.
Pray for those who have stayed and those who have gone.
Pray for the Muslim neighbor and the Christian brother
who once knew how to break bread together.
Let your country come home to you. Amen.
Live from Harissa
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lebanon broadcasts the Holy Mass and the Rosary from the basilica beside the great statue. The faithful of Lebanon and the worldwide Lebanese diaspora pray with the Mother of the mountain.
Visit & Learn More
- Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lebanon (official): saydetlebnen.com
- Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Lebanon
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