Pope Francis has postponed a trip to Lebanon that was scheduled for June due to health concerns, according to Lebanon’s tourism minister, Walid Nassar,

Nassar did not explain on the “health reasons” for the postponement, but on Thursday, the pope, who has been suffering from knee discomfort, was seen for the first time in a wheelchair at a public engagement.

“Lebanon received a letter from the Vatican officially informing it of the decision to postpone the scheduled visit of the Pope to Lebanon,” Nassar said in a statement published by the official National News Agency.

The pope’s “foreign visits and scheduled appointments… have been postponed for health reasons,” said Nassar, who heads a committee tasked with preparing for the trip.

The Vatican had never confirmed the visit but Lebanon’s presidency in April said that the 85-year-old pontiff would visit Lebanon in June.

Francis has been suffering for months with pain in his right knee, that forced him to cancel numerous engagements and from presiding over some religious celebrations in recent days.

The Vatican has not said officially what the problem is, although sources have told AFP he has chronic arthritis.

The pope himself has also spoken of an injured ligament in his knee.

He told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published last week that he would undergo an “intervention with infiltration”.

And in April, the pontiff told a newspaper in Argentina in April that he was treating his knee pain by putting ice on it and taking some painkillers.

His visit to Lebanon, following Lebanon’s May 15 parliamentary elections, would have been the third by a pope to the country since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Pope Benedict XVI visited in 2012, to appeal for peace months after the start of the civil war in neighbouring Syria, while Pope John Paul II came in 1997.

Since 2019, Lebanon, home to one of the Middle East’s major Christian communities, has been plagued by an unparalleled economic crisis, with more than 80% of the population currently living in poverty.

Francis, who recently met with Lebanon’s president and prime minister at the Vatican, had pledged to visit the nation and had previously expressed worry about the country’s mounting issues.