Rimini Meeting

Knowledge
Is Always an Event
From the Final Press Release of the Meeting

In an age in which it seems that nothing is interesting, the Meeting has shown that people are not motivated by speeches or abstract ideas; they are catalyzed by a presence.
For this reason, the message sent by the Holy Father was the sign of a familiar presence for the people of the Meeting and points to the hypothesis for the work of the entire week: “The Meeting wants to re-affirm that only Christ can show to man his real dignity and can communicate the authentic meaning of his existence… This is the protagonist… He wants us as partners for the realization of His Kingdom.”
The encounters of the series entitled “We Can Live This Way” have offered the witnesses of people passionate about their humanity. In the Christian encounter, they found the answer to the need for the infinity of their hearts and with this they became protagonists. Therefore, the prison exhibition was a possibility to meet the same newness in the physical presence of the prisoners that were guides. It showed a freedom that elsewhere is impossible. In the same way, with the witness of Eugenio Borgna and Giancarlo Cesana, the fundamental topic of loneliness was faced not as a psychological problem, but as a path to the discovery of the original dependence of every man that opens us up to the encounter with Someone in whom we can believe.
The encounters with members of the Catholic Church clarified that openness toward others begins with the consciousness of their own identity and that the Catholic faith is the optimal beginning for an encounter with everyone on the basis of common fundamental experience. Today, the international situation is confused and tense, and the Meeting, faithful to its history, has been the place for a dialogue for peace, human rights, and the cohabitation of peoples.
The political topics treated during the Meeting were not the gossip or the skirmishes among rivals.
The encounters with intellectuals and writers documented that culture is not a phenomenon of the academy, but it arises because people belong to something greater–culture becomes a critical and systematic conscience of an experience. 4,000 volunteers and over than 700,000 attendees, witnessing to the reality of a people for which faith is the experience of a satisfaction because it corresponds to the need that every man is, and it is the beginning of a journey of knowledge that makes him enter more and more into reality. Therefore, the title of the 2009 Meeting that will take place in Rimini August 23–29 is: “Knowledge Is Always an Event.”