RIMINI (ITALPRESS) – The bond between the Holy See and the Meeting for friendship among peoples is rooted in time and constellated with moments that have happened over the years marking the history of the event. This report will live a new page tomorrow, Saturday 22 August in the afternoon, with the wait visit to the Meeting of Pope Leo XIV. The event is part of an unbroken attention that has lasted for over forty years and involves three different pontiffs. Since the first edition of 1980, without any exception, every year the Pontiffs have sent their message to the Meeting. These words have constantly offered key readings to decline the theme of the event, accompanying the work of volunteers and the reflection of the participants, as witnessed also by the message sent by Pope Leo XIV for the 2025 edition. As a tradition, Pope Leo also entered the title of the Meeting of the current year (“In deserted places we will build with new bricks”), inviting to “awe the prophecy, letting itself be painted in the desert and to see from now on what can be born from the rubble and for so much, too innocent pain”.
One of the milestones of this story is Saint John Paul II’s visit to the Meeting on 29 August 1982. In that famous speech, the Pope drew a course that still guides the event today. This is the appeal that Pope Wojtyla launches from the auditorium of the old fair: “Peace today is seriously threatened, science and technology are likely to generate an imbalance full of negative consequences in the relationship between man and man, between man and nature, between nations and nations. From this contradiction, which seems unstoppable because structurally connected to the mystery of evil, it is necessary that the gaze turns “to the creator of our salvation” to generate a civilization that comes from truth and love. The civilization of love! Not to agonize, not to turn off in unbridled selfishness, in blind insensitivity to the pain of others. Brothers and sisters, built without ever getting tired of this civilization!”.
In the summer of 1991, during a meeting in Castel Gandolfo, which included Mass and breakfast with the Pope, some members of the Meeting had the opportunity to confront John Paul II. It was then that the Pontiff, taking the originality of the Meeting, gave a phrase destined to remain: “You make a frontier culture.” Pope Wojtyla gave another moment of deep emotion on August 22, 2004, when there was a live connection with the Holy Father at the end of the Holy Mass celebrated in Rimini, presided over by the then Bishop Monsignor Mariano De Nicolò and broadcast on Rai 1.
After a greeting to Fr. Luigi Giussani, as he gravely ill (both leave this world the following year), John Paul II recalls that “Christianity, despite human limitations and errors, is the greatest factor of true progress because Christ is inexhaustible principle”.
Although he never visited the pavilions of the Fair as Pope, Joseph Ratzinger was one of the great protagonists of the Meeting. On 1 September 1990, the then Cardinal and Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith held a historical intervention, entitled “A ever-reformed company”. It is a text of such density and topicality that has been mentioned on several occasions by his successor, Pope Francis. In his intervention at the Meeting, Cardinal Ratzinger addressed the theme of the renewal of the Church by overcoming the prejudices that reduce it to a simple suffocating institution. The Cardinal rejects proposals for reform based on activism or purely democratic logic, which risk transforming faith into opinion and the Church into a human product made by itself. The true reform is instead defined as “ablatio, that is a work of purification that removes human superstructures to make the authentic image of God shine and the essential. This path requires an openness to the Lord through faith, the grace of forgiveness and the ability to accept suffering, finding in the Saints the true guide.” That same day, Ratzinger entertains himself in a press conference, dialogue in an open and close manner with numerous journalists.
Pope Francis, in addition to faithfully continuing the tradition of papal messages, met at the end of the event, some of the witnesses and protagonists who animated the editions of the Meeting. Among these are the encounter with Father José Maria “Pepe” of Paola (at Santa Marta on August 24, 2013) and the moving encounter with two fathers, the Israeli Rami Elhanan and the Palestinian Bassam Aramin who lost their daughters due to terrorism and military occupation, accompanied by writer Colum McCann, who made them the protagonists of his novel Apeirogon.
The visit of Pope Leo XIV to the Meeting of Rimini (previewed for the afternoon of 22 August 2026) is the culmination of a path of intense dialogue begun in recent months. He is always the writer Colum McCann (a friend and guest of the Rimini kermesse) to accompany Pope Leo XIV on 26 August 2025 Diane Foley, the mother of journalist James W. Foley, kidnapped and killed by Isis.
On January 26, 2026, the Holy Father received in private audience the President of the Meeting Foundation, Bernhard Scholz. On that occasion he was formally renewed the invitation to Rimini. “I am very grateful that I could explain to the Holy Father in a very friendly climate the contents of the Meeting and the reasons for our commitment,” Scholz said on that occasion.
The joy turned on 19 February last, with the officialization of the visit. “We experience a great joy already waiting to welcome and listen to the Holy Father – said President Scholz. Since the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Leo invites us to build places of love, peace and reconciliation: his visit makes us even more aware and responsible for what the Meeting, as a place of encounter and sincere dialogue in search of the true, the beautiful and the just, represents for the hundreds of thousands of visitors and for the volunteers and collaborators who participate in it”. Finally, to anticipate the themes of the meeting and the perspectives of international dialogue of the Pontiff, Wednesday 18 March was presented to Pope Leo XIV the exhibition “Call two Faces. The martyrs of Algeria”, just before the departure of the Holy Father for his Apostolic Journey to the North African Country on 13 April. A further stop that confirms the deep universal breath of the Meeting, now ready to welcome Peter’s successor.
– Photo Ipa Agency –
(ITALPRESS).
