August 2026
The President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, sent the following message to the Meeting per l'amicizia fra i popoli Foundation's President, Bernhard Scholz:
"The Meeting di Rimini is a significant event. Now in its 47th edition, it represents a history, and in a time of extraordinary transformations, it aims to continue contributing to the building of history, weaving, with coherence, the threads of its own.
This year the thread has been woven around love. The concluding verse of Dante's Comedy "The Love which moves the sun and the other stars" does not express merely a feeling of individual experience.
Love that opens us to others, beyond ourselves and our present, is an inner force that takes on a relational, and therefore social, and precious dimension. Binding the self to the other, to the collective, breaks down solitude and gives direction to human journeys.
It is the opposite of the false realism that leads to inertia, distrust, and resignation, when instead the destiny of communities is to become protagonists of their own future. Pope Leo XIV recalled this in his Magnifica humanitas. A humanity not enclosed within illusory walls and condemned to selfishness, but open and sensitive to the injustices and hardships of those who suffer, ready to build new bridges.
Solidarity, social friendship, and the gratuitousness of love can open unprecedented horizons for politics, the economy, and civil life. We live in a time of reckless wars, of growing inequalities, while extremely narrow oligarchies accumulate powers greater than those of many sovereign States. It is from the humanity of women and men that we can draw the energy to reject conformity, passivity, hatred, and aversion to those who are different or foreign, and to educate for peace.
I wish the Meeting, and all those who will take part in the days in Rimini, continued success in generously building new horizons of humanity."
