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By Alessandro Guarasci

The Rimini Meeting will be held in the northern Italian sea town from 20 to 25 August and will offer some 140 conferences with about 450 Italian and international speakers, disclosed a presentation at the meeting on Monday afternoon at the Italian Embassy to the Holy See.

The 45th edition of the annual gathering organized by the Communion and Liberation Movement will have the title: ‘If we are not after the essence, then what are we after?’ and will be rich as every year with round tables, exhibitions, shows, cultural, sports and children's initiatives, which will effectively take over an area of about 120 thousand square metres at the Rimini Expo Centre.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, will partake in opening the 'A Presence for Peace' meeting on 20 August at 12 noon. 

180 partner companies

Each day of the 2024 Meeting will be enriched by the contribution of leading personalities from the institutional, cultural, academic, and business worlds, as well as exponents of the Church and of different faiths and cultures.

The talk on the theme of the Rimini Meeting will be given on Wednesday 21st August, at 3pm, by Adrien Candiard, a French Dominican member of the Institut dominicain d'études orientales.

In addition to the meetings, there will be 14 exhibitions and 17 shows, many of which will be held in the city's Teatro Galli. The number of partner companies is also growing: this year there will be 180.

Dialogue as antidote to hatred

At the conference, the President of the Meeting Foundation, Bernhard Scholz, spoke about the current events, saying that ‘the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and some of the subsequent interpretations have made us dramatically aware of the vulnerability of democracy.

"Against the poisons of hatred and contempt, of conspiracies and extreme polarisations," he reflected, "the essential antidotes are encounter, dialogue and confrontation."

Minister Tajani: putting man at the centre

The Meeting will be opened on 20 August at 12 noon by the meeting ‘A presence for peace,’ which will welcome the presence of Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.

On the theme of peace today, the Vice-President of the Council and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, also intervened at the embassy, saying that he is convinced that ‘the search for peace is essential, "especially at a time like this, with the war in Ukraine and the Middle East, in which it is civilians who pay the very high price for wicked choices."

"Essential," he underscored, "is putting man at the centre, defending an ethical vision on major issues such as artificial intelligence" and "the commitment to growth, all issues at the heart of the Italian Presidency of the G7, starting with that of the Trade Ministers to be held in Reggio Calabria in the coming days."

Sprouts of reconciliation in the midst of wars

The objective for the Meeting President, Mr Scholz reaffirmed,  "is to once again realise a Meeting that focuses on the great challenges of this historical moment in an atmosphere of mutual respect, through an exchange and sharing of experiences and knowledge."

"What is essential is not an austere reduction to a minimum necessary, but what makes everything live and flourish, what opens up a horizon of meaning for our daily work, for the education of our children, for our commitment for the good of all."

At the Meeting, he said, "we will make present sprouts of reconciliation that are born in the midst of wars, encounters that have become building sites of peace."

Will remember the Magistrate Rosario Livatino

The Vice-President of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, Attorney Fabio Pinelli, also returned to the Meeting's theme, recalling that ‘the essence of justice is represented by the many competent and authoritative Italian magistrates "who work daily for the 'good' of the country, privileging the dimension of service and the ideal thrust proper to the function, to the dimension of power."

Among the young magistrates who will be remembered at the upcoming Meeting, he reassured, is Rosario Livatino, ‘certainly for the sacrifice of his young life, but also for the model of magistrate he proposed: a model of 'constitutional magistrate.’"