The Pope left Damascus in Syria for Malta today. His Syrian Airlines Airbus 320 took off from Damascus international airport at around 9.45 a.m. Irish time.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, government ministers as well as Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox clerics saw the Pontiff at the airport giving him a grand farewell ceremony.
In predominantly Catholic Malta the Pope will preside at a beatification ceremony for two Maltese priests and a nun who lived in the 19th and 20th centuries.