close-up
great things

STRAIGHT TO THE HEART
There were 800,000 visitors, 130 events, and 8 exhibits, but, most importantly, the MEETING OF RIMINI witnessed to “a passion for the meaning of things,” succeeding in speaking to women and men of the whole world. Here’s the summing up of a week that hit the mark.

by Giorgio Vittadini

Polo shirt. Jeans. And one foot almost in the car, under the eyes of a staff that stole glances at their watches, as time had slipped out of their control. It was then that Sergio Marchionne, FIAT-Chrysler CEO and one of the most eagerly awaited guests of the Meeting, summarized what he’d learned after his rapid fire questions to everyone about everything, his talk in the auditorium, a tour of the stands and the exhibits, lunch with the Chiefs of Staff of the Rimini celebration, and a visit that had run unexpectedly overtime: “There’s something new here. Something I’m going to have to reflect on a lot.”
Here, there certainly is something new, to understand and judge, in order to grasp what made it possible. It was meant to be the Meeting of the “heart”(in fact, its title was “That Nature which Pushes Us to Desire Great Things Is the Heart”), of the desire that unites women and men, because it pushes them to seek great things. It was, and how! But it was so because that greatness, in some way, was made close, tangible. It is not a question of the merit or excellence of the organizers. It is a grace that happens, and that was seen in action. Everywhere: on the stage of the talks, in the exhibit halls, and also in the little things, those that happen behind the scenes and that often have the faces of the volunteers, who are the soul of the Meeting and who prompted a figure like Filaret, the Metropolitan of Minsk, and protagonist of a historic encounter with Cardinal Erdö, to say, “In order to learn unity, you need to come here. There is a mass of Christian hearts, souls full of humanity desirous of the salvation of the world.” It touched an experienced banker like Cesare Geronzi, who, recalling his meetings with Fr. Giussani, was moved to say he was “sorry he hadn’t come earlier” (a line repeated more or less in the same way by many first-time guests). It impressed the Irish President Mary McAleese, who said, “In Rimini, there’s something good for everyone, and it’s visible.”
These pages offer a draft of an itinerary, without claiming to be complete in giving an idea of the import of a phenomenon that by now continually breaks the molds and defies labels and prejudices, evoking the curiosity of everyone–truly everyone who sees it personally (there is not one neophyte to the Meeting who did not exclaim, “It’s different from what I expected!”)–and often conquering them, great and small. A Constitutional Court judge confessed to a friend, “Your secret is that you can draw out the positive in everyone”; a politician admitted off the record to a journalist, “Knowing that man desires the good is the only thing that enables me to bear the shabbiness I see every day.” A superbanker wanted to make a DVD of the exhibit on the economy (explained by university students) “to show to our executives, so they can understand truly what the economic crisis is about”. An actor was scheduled to stay just the time necessary for his Caligula performance, and yet three days later was still there passing through the halls along with the others. A cardinal went to the origin of everything in one sentence (“You see that Fr. Giussani is present more than ever,” Stanislaw Rylko) and a girl, toward the end of the Meeting, burst out with all her desire: “I wish I lived in a city like this!” Welcome, my dear. Welcome to all of you. Because if the Meeting exists, it means that that city already exists.
(D.P.)

A new subject. With 800,000 visitors, 130 events, and 35 performances, once again this year the Meeting had impressive dimensions. And yet, more than the naked numbers, what best summarized what truly happened was the final bulletin: “The Meeting was successful because it encountered the need to find again a positive gaze on reality; it was a proposal for the need of change and renewal of social life.”
In fact, a title like this year’s, “That nature that pushes us to desire great things is the heart,” forced everyone to question themselves, as seen when a volunteer responded to those who exhorted her to work “for the others”: “I do the Meeting first of all for me, to enrich my experience.” Without this movement of the “I,” you only give others propaganda and voluntarism.
Nor could the members of the team that leads the Meeting exempt themselves from this questioning about the meaning of the title from the very beginning of their work, in dialogue with Julián Carrón, verifying the intuition Fr. Giussani had after the first Meeting in 1980: “The Meeting is generated by people characterized by the seriousness of life that is passion for the meaning of things; passion for life makes us capable of friendship.”
Thus, protagonists and themes were not thought out at the table, but drawn from that sea of presence moved by the desire of great things in everyday life that is the Movement. Of note this year, in particular, was the creative input of CL university students in at least four exhibits (the ones on the economic crisis, on Dante’s Ulysses, on Mathematics, and on Flannery O’Connor, (the latter done by American students), the determined contribution of many journalists, and the sacrifice of the 3,193 volunteers, all committed to offering their work for a greater purpose and striving to discover in this a correspondence.
This reality is no longer prevalently Italian: people from 29 nations came as volunteers, speakers, and groups on visit, the sign of a Movement that can speak to the human heart from any part of the world, and capable of a new judgment on the crucial questions of our time.

“Test everything....” As happens every year, in his greeting to the Meeting, the Pope challenged everyone to realize the value of the title: “In the depths of every human being is an irrepressible restlessness that impels him to seek something that satisfies his yearning. [Man] must, so to speak, go out of himself toward what is able to fulfill the breadth of his desire (…) for witnessing in our time that the ‘great things’ for which the human heart yearns are found in God.”
The title was then discussed in the main encounters of the Meeting, in clear dialectic with the dominant culture, the enemy of the truest human desires. As Fr. Stefano Alberto said in the encounter on the title of the Meeting, those who seek an “impossible” can arrive at an answer, first unimaginable but supremely to their advantage, in its free and totally gratuitous manifestation. This is an event, as the Patriarch of Venice, Angelo Scola, said, in which “the integral desire of man, that is, his heart, encounters full satisfaction.”
The testimonies–including that of Rose Busingye and her Ugandan friends; the widow Margherita Coletta; Maria Teresa Landi, a researcher at the prestigious National Institute of Health in Washington, DC; Fr. Monacelli with David Maurice Frank, a native North American from Vancouver, Canada;  Fiammetta Cappellini from Haiti; and Mireille Yoga from the Congo–were more than ever methodologically effective examples of the theme proposed, because they demonstrated the ability of the Christian experience to enable them to face the most difficult conditions, experiencing the human fullness that is the promise contained in their own desire.

Invitation to dinner. It was precisely this inquiry into what characterizes human nature that generated unimaginable openings, and not only with pastors of the Catholic Church, such as Péter Erdö, Paul Josef Cordes, Jean-Louis Tauran, and Diarmuid Martin. It was striking once again to see profound and true friendship, unity, with people of other religious confessions as well.
Before 15,000  people, Filaret, the Orthodox Metropolitan of Minsk and Sluck, embraced the Cardinal of Budapest, Péter Erdö, President of the Council of Episcopal Conferences of Europe. In the heart of a passionate witness of personal faith, he showed the main road to unity between Catholics and Orthodox: “In Christ, we are already united.”
Friendship was renewed with the philosopher and Anglican theologian John Milbank and his group of traveling companions, including Phillip Blond, one of those who inspired the subsidiary welfare program of UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
The Jewish jurist Joseph Weiler, from New York, continued his tradition of inviting Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Muslim friends, this time including the President of the European Commission, José Barroso, to his Friday night dinner beginning the Jewish Sabbath. The great friend of the Meeting, Wael Farouq, a Muslim, was so amazed and moved that, as he hugged Weiler, he said he never would have imagined, even two years ago, accepting the invitation of an Orthodox Jew. This climate of true brotherhood gave birth to Farouq’s invitation, together with some judges of the Egyptian Supreme Court, to a public event related to the Meeting on October 28th and 29th, which is expected to draw thousands of people (see the article in this issue). 
The encounter was renewed with the Buddhists of Monte Koya and with great philosophers such as Fabrice Hadjadj, who presented The “I” is Reborn in an Encounter, the fifth volume of the Equipe with Fr. Giussani. The Chinese translation of The Religious Sense was launched, and dialogue with great international entities such as the Tony Blair Faith Foundation and the Adenauer Foundation was furthered. Visits such as those of Joshua DuBois, Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, of the former British Ambassador to the Vatican, Francis Campbell, and of the current U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Miguel Diaz, as well as of directors of major newspapers such as Mario Calabresi and Ferruccio De Bortoli, clarified and enriched discussion of the Meeting theme.

Radical questions. We are in a world without Christ, after Christ, but also at the end of the political and economic ideologies that dominated the history of recent centuries, and that are no longer tenable. Though this can open people to relativism and nihilism, it can also make them more sensitive to examples of true humanity in action.
A human position more respectful of its profound desires is also capable of asking radical questions in all fields of human knowledge. Therefore, Italian figures of the economic-financial world, starting from the evaluations emergent in our exhibit, “A Job for Each of Us. Each Person to His Own Work. Within the Economic Crisis, Beyond the Crisis,” explored the need that economic rationality not be reduced to the egoistic maximization of profit, but be moved by that “desire that ignites the engine,” of which Fr. Giussani spoke. And thus, Sergio Marchionne, FIAT-Chrysler CEO, in calling for change Italy, spoke of the desire for this, described well by Giussani in an unpublished work: “There is no true ideal perception if it does not become energy for change, that is, affection, energy for mobilization of space and time, for reality in function of the ideal.” The CEO added: “I have to reflect on what I have seen, because it is bigger than I had imagined.” Similar experiences took place in the dialogues that many of our friends had on themes such as human rights and the structure of the State, with figures such as Giuliano Amato, Carter Snead, Paolo Grossi, and David Kretzmer; on various aspects of science with Edward Nelson, Andrea Moro, Mauro Ferrari, and Giacomo Rizzolatti; and in art with the interpretation of Camus’ Caligula.
There was no dearth of political themes, above all in international issues, with José Barroso (President of the European Commision), Mary McAleese (President of Ireland), and Franco Frattini (Italian Foreign Minister), in dialogue on religious freedom with representatives of Arab nations. Discussion of Italian politics featured exponents of the current political class probing real issues that emerge from a presence of people and of works, according to that concern for the common good expressed in the Companionship of Works exhibit on the Good Government frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti.
Thus, many famous figures, who came to speak only about what they had in mind, perceived the intelligence of reality that emerges from the Meeting, and asked themselves about its origin: the intelligence of the faith showed itself for the first time to those who had never noted it before.

A “strange” reality. What really happens at the Meeting had to be told to those outside, and so the Meeting’s own television news, TgMeeting, was broadcast online at ilsussidiario.net, and received more than 200,000 visits a day. Most of the media, explaining the encounters and speakers, described the Meeting as a “strange” reality to be respected, a reality even more impossible to catalogue than before.We are not the just, the pure, or the good; we’re simply people who are passionate about Something that came to us and responded to our truest desires. “Bestial as always before, carnal, self-seeking as always before, selfish and purblind as ever before,/ Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light;/ Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.”
It is the ongoing battle of Christianity, as always, the crucial battle of the Movement throughout the world.