Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rahi affirmed, "We renew our faith that Christ the Lord is present among us and with us and for us, especially in these difficult circumstances we are experiencing regarding our collapsing Lebanese state and our people who are increasingly suffering and are forced to emigrate from the homeland to countries that respect human beings and their rights, a respect that is absent in our land." He pointed out, during the Sunday mass at the Church of Our Lady in the Patriarchal See in Bkerke, that "all of this occurred due to the misgovernance of a corrupt, destructive, and failed political group, without any moral or national conscience."