July 2025
An event-exhibition at the 46th Meeting in Rimini offers a new reading of the figure of St. Francis through the words of his Testament. A powerful dialogue between art, history and the present.
An announcement from Assisi, in the heart of Franciscan Umbria
The exhibition "I, Brother Francis. 800 years of a great adventure" was presented in Assisi, at the Domus Pacis of Santa Maria degli Angeli. This will be one of the focal points of the 46th Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples (Rimini, August 22-27, 2025).
An event full of meaning, both for the echo of Francis's figure in the present time and for the choice to launch the exhibition precisely in the places where he lived and died. Not a sterile celebration, but a shared and courageous gesture that unites – as Provincial Minister Fra Francesco Piloni recalled – spirituality, beauty and the desire to be witnesses of hope in a time marked by divisions and fears.
The Testament as guiding thread
The exhibition is built around Francis's Testament, the text with which the saint, in his final months of life, entrusted to the friars and to the Church not a sum of precepts, but the essence of his own experience. "We chose to start from there – said Fra Francesco Piloni – because in the Testament there are key words, authentic 'passwords' for living today. Francis speaks to us, to the people of our time, restless and thirsting for authenticity."
And it is precisely this spiritual heritage that the exhibition intends to transmit: not a Francis to be admired from afar, but to be listened to in depth, as a contemporary interlocutor.
The voice of poetry and that of institutions
During the meeting in Assisi, Davide Rondoni, poet and President of the National Committee for the celebrations of the Eighth Centenary, and Stefania Proietti, President of the Umbria Region, also spoke. Rondoni offered a brief but incisive intervention, in which he recalled that Francis was a poet because he was capable of distinguishing between love and possession, between desire and possession, like the troubadours of southern France. "Francis – he said – knew how to live love as a free gift, as a choice of freedom."
President Proietti thanked the Meeting for having chosen the Umbrian land to launch this initiative and recalled the words of Francis's Canticle – "for those who forgive for your love" – as a very current message of peace, even for wounded lands like Gaza and Israel: "Eight billion acts of good can change the world," she stated forcefully, inviting people not to be discouraged.
Pizzaballa: the meek will inherit the earth
Among the strongest voices of the day was that of Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, who delivered an intense meditation on the figure of Francis starting from an often overlooked beatitude: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Meekness not as passivity, but as discrete and generative power: "Saint Francis is still today a universal point of reference because he embodied that meekness that changes history without using force. He did not solve the problems of poverty, he did not change political systems. But he lived like Christ. And this remains."
The Cardinal also spoke about the dramatic situation in Gaza and the Holy Land, bringing living and concrete testimonies of suffering, but also of resistant humanity. "The meek are everywhere, even in Gaza, even in Israel. They are the people who, despite having nothing, share the little they have. They are the mothers who give up medicine for their children. They are the children who, wounded, say: 'Jesus saved me, now I'm well.'" And he concluded: "The future will not be decided by those who have the power of bombs, but by those who know how to look into the eyes of others and recognize them as brothers. This is the strongest message that Francis leaves us."
Scholz: building with new bricks
The President of the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples Foundation, Bernhard Scholz, highlighted the deep connection between the 2025 Meeting theme – "In desert places, we will build with new bricks" – and the exhibition dedicated to Saint Francis: "Francis is one of those bricks. But he is not an abstract symbol. He is a living stone, as thousands of men and women have been and are today who live in freedom, responsibility, charity. The beatitudes are new bricks. Francis literally began by taking real bricks. Then he understood that he himself was the first brick."
Scholz then emphasized the radical relevance of the Franciscan message: "Saint Francis does not only pose religious questions to us. He questions us about the why of our acting, our working, educating, generating culture and enterprise. In a world that accustoms us to think only about how and what, he puts the why back at the center. But he doesn't do it in a moralistic way: he does it with contagious joy."
A dialogue between past and present
The exhibition relies on a scientific committee composed of Franciscan friars and figures from the cultural and artistic world. At the center of the exhibition path, in addition to the texts, there will be a dialogue between two works of art from different eras: the original "Saint Francis" by Cimabue (exceptionally on display in Rimini thanks to the Museum of Porziuncola) and the contemporary installations by Fra Sidival Fila, artist and Franciscan friar. A powerful comparison between the power of the icon and current creativity, to show how beauty continues to speak today.
As Fra Francesco Piloni recalled, the exhibition closes with a feminine touch: Saint Clare. She too is a "daughter of the same adventure" and silent guardian of a charism that does not fade. Her gaze will accompany the visitor at the end of the path, to remind us that the Franciscan experience has been a shared experience from the beginning.
An invitation to Assisi, an invitation to Rimini
"The exhibition – said Fra Francesco – was born precisely from a collaboration, from a desire to unite forces in the Church. Just as the springs of Monviso become the Po river only by joining together, so today it is time to create unity, among friars, laypeople, movements, different experiences. Unity is not strategy: it is vocation."
The final invitation is simple and heartfelt: let yourself be challenged by Francis, encounter him not as a distant figure but as a brother. And do it in Rimini, in the heart of the Meeting, in a place where research, beauty, dialogue and humanity intertwine.
Participate in the exhibition "I, Brother Francis. 800 years of a great adventure"
📍 Rimini Fair, Pavilion A1
📅 August 22-27, 2025
ℹ️ Info and hours: Go to the event page
