The Human Person: A State of Emergency - The title of the 34th edition of the Meeting for the Friendship Amongst Peoples which will take place from 18th to 24th August 2013

“The thought of man as a created being,” wrote Benedict XVI in his handwritten message to the Rimini Meeting, “causes uneasiness as it implies an essential reference to something else, or rather, to Someone else” who “instead of hiding or decreasing the greatness and supreme dignity of man, reveals [himself] in a luminous way and calls [one] to life.” The Holy Father invited us upon the opening of the Meeting to purify ourselves from “false infinites” which fill man’s heart, in order to discover “the truest dimension of human existence.”

This is the cause for the movement and gratitude that has accompanied us during these past seven days: 98 encounters with 271 speakers, 9 exhibitions, 21 spectacles, and 800,000 people present from 40 different countries.

The experience in these days, the facts that have occurred, the population of the Meeting, have shown that it is possible to live this dimension of human existence, giving testimony to this “relation to the infinite” for which each man yearns. This is not a question of spiritualism for insiders or ‘pious’ people but an essential factor in living every aspect of life with truth.

“Nothing is trivial nor meaningless in the path of life and of the world. Man is made for an infinite God that was made flesh and that took our humanity to raise it to the heights of His divine nature,” wrote Benedict XVI. An infinite that became flesh, present in all circumstances of life: this is why everything interests us, this is why we confronted ourselves with institutional personalities and with men of other cultures and other religions, such as the Lebanese company protagonist of the opening spectacle. This is why we proposed a new lecture on Dostoyevsky and a new way to look at Rock ’n’ Roll, as took place at two of the most visited exhibitions during this Meeting. Then we have the exhibition, The Unforeseeable Instant. Young Protagonists for Development: young people that have said to thousands and thousands people that it is possible to not be broken down by circumstances but to be reborn and build in every moment, discovering again the profound nature of our own “I” as insuppressible desire for good.

Once again, in the shows and events dedicated to art and literature, we have rediscovered that in “the aspiration for beauty that dwells in the depths of every human heart," as the Lebanese artist Ivan Caracalla said, you can meet anyone. We ask only one thing from politics: freedom – meaning that man’s need to live up to his desire is not hindered or suffocated, that there is the possibility to construct works that are "new forms of civilization" (John Paul II ); a new civilization that was present among 4000 volunteers – 750 during the pre-meeting and 3393 during the Meeting: faces and gazes that have shown everyone how exhausting one’s self for the ideal leads to a human fulfillment. "It's in the encounter with Jesus where our real stature emerges, the stature of man and of his desire; of that nostalgia for the absolute that transcends human cultures," as proclaimed at the meeting on the theme of the Meeting by Javier Prades.

As it happens every year, many people recognize the richness of this experience and its value as a contribution to the world. "There is a wealth of resources and indispensable energies," wrote the President Napolitano in his message. "The Meeting is a school," said a visitor, where one learns how to be a man – witnessing that religious experience has something to do with all of life while learning to respect the function of power to build a common good, abandoning our "bunker" of indifference, while discovering that everything from religious freedom to neuroscience and from the economic problems to the great issues of international democracy have something to do with human life.

This is our path. This is the journey that we want to keep walking: testifying to that which we have encountered and to that which generates what we have witnessed in recent days.

In the society that we live in there is an urgent need to redefine a clear identity to our “I”, the protagonist of life and builder of history. For this reason, the title of the 34th edition of the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples – which will take place from the 18th to 24th of August, 2013 – will be: "The Human Person: A State of Emergency."



Rimini, August 25th 2012