30 July 2026
At the Meeting, cordiality and friendship take on an authentic meaning: even people who are very different from one another share a desire to go beyond appearances and to share what matters most to them. This is the conviction Andrea has developed over the years. A 25-year-old volunteer who first came as a visitor, he discovered that building the Meeting means creating a place capable of changing the way people experience relationships.
Andrea was 18 when, almost out of curiosity, he accepted an invitation from some friends to visit the Meeting for the first time. «I was intrigued by the title of the 2019 edition, Your Name Was Born From What You Gazed Upon: I did not fully understand it, but I felt that it touched something in me», he says. The impact was immediate: «I had never encountered a place so rich in initiatives, encounters and different realities. It was a richness I had never seen before».
Then came the pandemic years, and his return was postponed until 2022. This time, however, he chose to volunteer, despite some initial doubts. «I thought volunteering meant missing out on everything else at the Meeting». The first task assigned to Andrea was one of the most demanding: working as a parking attendant under the August sun. Yet something unexpected happened: «I realized that there the effort felt lighter. It was effort directed towards a purpose, not devoid of meaning. I understood that I was helping to build something great». In the following years he moved on to the help desk, assisting visitors, and then to presenting the exhibition dedicated to Alcide De Gasperi in 2024. Last year he accepted a role on the auditorium stewarding team. An apparently less rewarding task. But it was precisely there, while watching the events in the auditorium, that Andrea fully understood that «there is no place like the Meeting». Because here «the aim is not to assert one’s own idea, but to share what moves and sustains one’s life».
At a time marked by wars and loneliness, the Meeting offers a concrete response. «We live in a world where we are often afraid to talk to one another. Instead of seeking the truth together with others, we are more attached to our own way of thinking». This is why «there is a desperate need for a place like the Meeting», Andrea explains. His hope is that everyone will come to know the Meeting: «How much time we would regain if we could live as we do at the Meeting». This year, the young volunteer is among the curators of the exhibition dedicated to the Jesuits. Above all, he hopes visitors will leave with one awareness: «When a person is moved by the desire to share what brings them joy, an unimaginable creativity emerges. That is what the first Jesuits did. When something moves us, life becomes an explosion of creativity and something new is generated for others as well».
Those who discover the value of the Meeting also feel the desire to help build it. The Meeting, Andrea stresses, is a place that must be built together: «It is something tangible, made by people who put their lives into it». This is why support becomes «an act of sharing that involves the whole person, including the way they choose to use what they have».
