Since his father became king in 2015, Crown Prince Mohammed has sought to moderate the kingdom’s religious rhetoric. He has stripped the power to arrest from the religious police, arrested dozens of hard-line clerics and pushed for social changes, including promising women the right to drive starting in June.

Earlier this month, he told an international investment conference in Riyadh that the kingdom needed a “moderate, balanced Islam that is open to the world and to all religions and all traditions and peoples.”

For Lebanon, the visit cast Patriarch Rai in the role of unofficial ambassador, seeking clarity about the status of the prime minister and seeking to calm tensions that could endanger Lebanon and the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese living and working in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries.

The remittances they send home are essential to Lebanon’s economy.

Thousands of Maronite families live in Saudi Arabia, which has no churches and bans the public observance of any religion other than Islam.

“There is no life here as a Christian, or as a Catholic; life here is either as a neutral person or as a Muslim,” said Danny Nasrallah, a Lebanese Catholic who has worked in the kingdom in the field of business development for eight years. “You have to pray in your heart when you want to pray.”

While he and others did not expect any immediate changes after the patriarch’s visit, they saw it as a good omen of where the kingdom is headed.

“What’s important is that the line between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia remains open,” said Johnny Tannoury, a mechanical engineer who is Maronite. “There is a unique relationship between the Lebanese people and Saudi Arabia and we don’t want that to change.”