"If we are not after the essence, then what are we after?" Contained within this dramatic and powerful dialogue from Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger is the vertigo of those who try to face life’s deepest questions. It is from here that the 2024 edition of the Rimini Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples, which has this very question as its title, takes its cue. We talked about it with Bernhard Scholz, who has been the President of the Meeting since 2020, to try to understand where, how and in what faces this quest can be embodied, which touches all spheres of existence, from economics to education, from war to cultural challenges to the urgency of dialogue. This is what he told us.

Where did the title of the Meeting come from and why is there this urgency to return to the essence?
In this time of "epochal change," as Pope Francis called it, with all its cultural, social and political changes, with the many unknowns and a growing global conflict, it seemed useful to us to better understand American author Cormac McCarthy's provocative question about the "essence." It is an invitation not to run away from the provocations of life by taking refuge in resignation or indifference, ideology or violence for its own sake. Instead, it is an invitation to discover and rediscover that essence which enables us to face reality as it presents itself. This does not mean reducing ourselves to the bare minimum, but facing life with freedom and responsibility. A full life, a fruitful and supportive social life. For Christians this essence certainly coincides with the recognition of God's presence as the meaning of everything and the destiny of every person. Faith makes us experience reality as given and makes us love God "in all things and above all things," as the liturgy says. Essence open to everything and everyone, bent on recognizing what is true and beautiful and, therefore, essential in everything. This can be seen in very different ways in the exhibitions on Franz and Franziska Jägerstätter, on Alcide de Gasperi, or on Enzo Piccinini. Even the Meeting's inaugural show "Who Are You? The Challenge of Jerusalem," based on an autobiographical story by the great author Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, will be an opportunity to better understand this perspective. We will also remember St. Francis who lived a more than radical essentiality and who, precisely because of this, was able to value every detail of creation and live a fraternity without limits.

The 2024 edition: How will this quest for the essence be expressed?
We will deal with so many issues that directly or indirectly affect everyday life: major geopolitical upheavals, artificial intelligence, changes in the economy and technology, the care of life from its beginning to its end, work and its meaning, migration, justice... In all of these, the central question will always be the search for that point, that criterion, that experience that allows us to build something new, better, more adequate. Let me give two examples. A decisive issue for the future – and we will talk about it in several meetings – is the education and training of young people. We know very well how important and indispensable teaching, the competence of teachers, the organization of schools, vocational training and universities are. But we know equally well that all these aspects become truly useful only if there is an educational passion that seeks the good of young people and is capable of accompanying them in the discovery of themselves and the world with a proposal of meaning. Or let us think of the economy, another central theme of the Meeting. There are innumerable factors necessary to make it work, but only an approach that makes all factors converge toward the common good, and the continuous verification of this convergence, allows it to be at the service of all. If this essence, capable of valorizing every aspect in the most appropriate way, is lacking, there is a risk of fuelling impoverishment, welfarism and inequality. We could also say that the essence is always linked in some way to the origin and purpose of our commitment, of our initiatives.

Another theme that has always been dear to the people of the Meeting is peace.
The central question is where can peace come from? Undoubtedly diplomatic and political efforts are needed to silence the weapons, and we will talk about that too in Rimini. But it is not enough. Conflicts have sooner or later re-exploded in places where there had been no real reconciliation. What is decisive is what allows us to overcome hatred and resentment, to build or rebuild positive relationships between people and peoples. We have many testimonies of people from Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Palestine, who really care about peace and who manage to live it in the midst of military conflicts. Real seeds of peace in a winter of hatred. Let us remember that European countries have united after atrocious wars thanks to people like Alcide de Gasperi. As I said, there will be an exhibition dedicated to him on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of his death that documents how much faith was the real source of his political initiative, as it was for Adenauer and Schuman. There will also be important moments of interreligious dialogue, which is essential for a fraternal and fruitful coexistence among different religions, not least also to try to overcome the widespread political instrumentalization of religions, which is one of the most harmful evils of humanity.

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In recent weeks, however, Trump's assassination attempt, polarization, and rampant hatred on social media seem to cloud these good examples. What is the positive hypothesis from which Rimini Meeting starts, what is its strength?
What has happened in the United States, but I also think of other things that have happened in Europe, has made it clear, once again, how vulnerable our democracies have become. The causes are varied. So many problems are very complex and therefore difficult to understand. We are overwhelmed every day by a tsunami of information; yet, we hardly come to have a thorough understanding of what is going on. This is one of the reasons for the growing distrust that increasingly fuels conspiracy theories or ideological closure that in turn foster polarization. This dynamic is fuelled by social problems and increasing inequality that make many people feel marginalized, misunderstood and abandoned by so-called elites.
During the Meeting, we will specifically address the issue of inequality from the perspective of economic and social policies with international experts. We will focus on health care systems that are increasingly in trouble, and, through various exhibitions, we will highlight many experiences of integration at both the social and business levels. For the reasons I mentioned earlier, we will also dialogue about the world of media to reflect on its impact on society and relationships. The Meeting itself is a place of meeting and sharing, of dialogue and the deepening of the necessary knowledge. It is, therefore, a place that by its very nature helps to create a creative sociality, capable of overcoming polarization and fostering dialogue in mutual respect. This nature of the Meeting is certainly linked to the fact that it was born and reborn in each of its editions from an experience of faith that unites thousands of people in a harmonious way.#TowardstheMeeting24