Pope Leo gathered leaders of Lebanon's religious communities next to the old frontline of the country's sectarian civil war on Monday and urged peaceful coexistence in a region beset by bloodshed and tumult.
"May every bell toll, every adhan, every call to prayer blend into a single, soaring hymn," he said, using the Arabic term for the Muslim call to prayer.
Leo is near the end of his first overseas trip as pope, a visit to Turkey and Lebanon, ancient biblical lands where he has championed the advancement of Christian and wider religious unity, and the cause of peace.
On Tuesday, in the final appearances of his trip, he will pray at the site of a deadly 2020 port blast that shredded swathes of Beirut, then lead a Mass on the city's historic waterfront with an expected 100,000 people.
Leo has described his trip to Lebanon, racked by years of conflict, political paralysis and economic misery, as a mission of peace, and in Turkey he warned that humanity's future was at risk due to the world's ongoing bloody conflicts.
The pope met faith leaders on Monday in the central Martyrs' Square, situated on the "green line" that divided Muslim west and Christian east Beirut during the 1975-90 civil war, and urged them to be "builders of peace".
Lebanese representatives of the Alawite and Druze communities, which have suffered through bouts of sectarian violence in neighbouring Syria this year, spoke at the event.
In the crowd, Alawite Mohammed Saleh said his community needed peace, protection and dignity. "We ask him humbly to remember in his prayer the Alawite community in the Middle East," Saleh said.
Later on Monday about 15,000 young people gathered for an event with the 70-year-old pontiff outside the Maronite Catholic headquarters.
"There is hope within you, a gift that we adults seem to have lost. ... You have more time to dream, to plan and to do good," he said.