Leo XIV calls a great cultural conversion in his greeting to the Rimini Meeting

Pope Leo XIV calls that “faith, hope and charity translate into great cultural conversion” in a message on the occasion of the Meeting for friendship between peoples which is celebrated in Rimini (Italy) in the next few days.

This initiative was born in 1980, inspired by what Luigi Giusanni, founder of communion and liberation, calls the elementary experience, an innate desire of truth, beauty and justice present in the heart of each human being and that constitutes the basis for the dialogue and encounter of people of different creeds and cultures.

This occurs through an extensive program of activities of all kinds (political, economic, cultural, etc.) that congregate thousands of people around the last week of August on the Italian Adriatic coast.

“Deserts are usually discarded places, considered inappropriate for life. However, where it seems that nothing can be born, the sacred writing continually again narrates the passages of God,” he exposes at the beginning of the letter sent last August 11 to Rimini’s bishop, Mons. Nicolò Anselmi.

Thus, he details how in the desert the people of God born where, “through its mature hardness the option for freedom” with the help of God that “transforms the desert instead of love and decisions, makes it bloom as a garden of hope.”

The Pope also recalls that this arid environment has also been indicated by the prophets “as the scenario of a commitment, to which we must return every time the heart is warned, to recommend with the fidelity of God” and inhabited by monks and nuns “in the name of all of us, representing the whole humanity, the Lord of Silence and life.”

From the extensive program prepared for this meeting, Leo XIV uniquely appreciated one of the exhibitions dedicated to The martyrs of Algeria. “In them the vocation of the Church to inhabit the desert in deep communion with all humanity, overcoming the walls of distrust that oppose religions and cultures, in full imitation of the movement of incarnation and delivery of the Son of God.”

In this sense, he explained that this “is the true path of mission. Not self -examination, in the contrast of identities, but the gift of itself to the martyrdom of those who love day and night, in joy and in the midst of tribulations, only Jesus as Lord.”

Importance of dialogue

One of the identity of the Rimini Meeting is to promote spaces for dialogue between people between believers and atheists, from different religions and also among Christians with different sensibilities.

For Leo XIV “these are important listening exercises, which prepare the ‘new bricks’ with which to build the future that God has already reserved for all, but that can only open up welcoming each other.”

“We can no longer affirm ourselves to the Kingdom of God, which is a kingdom of peace. And where those responsible for state and international institutions seem unable to let them prevail the law, mediation and dialogue, religious communities and civil society must dare to prophesy,” the Pontiff emphasized.

This means “letting yourself be pushed to the desert and see from now on what can be born from the debris and so much, too innocent pain,” he added.

On the other hand, Leo XIV recalled that God “chose the humble, the little ones, the helpless and, from the bosom of the Virgin Mary, one of them became, to write their history in our history”, in such a way that “without the victims of history, without the hungry and thirsty Without the cry of all creation we will not have new bricks. ”

“To deny the voice of others and give up being understood are failures and dehumanizing experiences. They must oppose the patience of the encounter with a mystery always another, from which the difference of each one is a sign,” added the Pontiff, who reiterated that the presence “disarmed and disarmed” of Christians in contemporary society must translate “with competence and imagination the gospel of the kingdom in alternative forms of development in alternative forms to alternative forms to alternative ways growth routes without equity or sustainability. ”

In this regard, he emphasized that “a faith that moves away from the desertification of the world, or that indirectly contributes to tolerate it, would no longer be following Jesus Christ.”

Regarding the digital revolution, the Pope warned against the risk “of accentuating discriminations and conflicts: therefore, it must be inhabited with the creativity of who, obeying the Holy Spirit, is no longer a slave, but a child.”

“Then the desert becomes a garden and the ‘city of God’, announced by the saints, transfigures our desolate places,” he concluded.