The title of the XXXVI edition of the Meeting for friendship amongst people that will take place in Rimini from the 20th to the 26th August 2015

PLEASE NOTE: THE MEETING 2015 WILL TAKE PLACE FROM THURSDAY 20TH TO WEDNESDAY 26TH.

What are you looking for? Pope Francis invited us to go deep to the heart of the provocation of the Meeting with this question. The Meeting of this year took place in a dramatic and worrisome scenario, at a national, and even more so an international level.

The President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, told us in his message for the beginning of the Meeting the following: “The ends are not far. They rather belong to our world, as well as to our past. Moreover, the tragic events that take place every day in many parts of the world closely affect us.”

This year, the Meeting aimed at reaching those ends and presenting them through huge witnesses such as the custody of the Holy Land Father Pizzaballa, the Ukrainian professor Aleksandr Filonenko, the bishop of Aleppo Georges Abou Khazen; the Vicar to His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Panteleimon, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq Shlemon Warduni. There were Italian figures such as the Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, Father Antonio Spadaro, the President Luciano Violante, and the professor Giorgio Buccellati as well. Finally, there also were institutional personalities such as the Ministers Poletti and Giannini, the President of Confindustria Giorgio Squinzi, as well as industrial protagonists such as Sergio Marchionne.

Although there were different stories and circumstances, they all had a common denominator: the strength of the heart. It is the heart that belongs to a free man, able to recognize the essential.
The way that helps us increasingly recognize this essential is going towards the ends, meeting those ends. It also give us the opportunity to experience such an important presence which gives sense to reality. For this reason we are interested in everything, in every aspect of life.

As every year, many people became aware of the richness of these days, the richness of this experience and its value as a contribution to the world. A guest who has come to the Meeting for the first time in his life told us: “the unity that can be experienced here is a hope for everybody”.

The Meeting directly addresses the heart of every contemporary man through a simple language. It is a language that marks the beginning of new relationships and of a story that goes on.

Everybody is a protagonist of this story. More than 4000 volunteers from over 43 countries in the world show that the friendship amongst people is a tangible experience at the Meeting; the 280 speakers; the organizers of the exhibitions (scientists, writers, professors) that, instead of confining themselves to specialist and academic inner circles, create a dialogue amongst them and work together with young people; the personalities from the economy and entrepreneurial world that decided to helped us build the Meeting.

We go back to our cities, to our countries (more than 70), with the desire of keep following this path. And we are aware that, as Giussani said, the solution to the problems that arise in everyday life is not directly facing them, but discovering the nature of the subject that faces them.

This is the reason why the title of the XXXVI edition of the Meeting for friendship amongst people that will take place in Rimini from the 20th to the 26th of August 2015 is: What is this lack, o heart, of which you are suddenly full of?