NUNTIATORIA

Pope Leo XIV Calls for a “Great Cultural Conversion” at the Rimini Meeting

Pope Leo XIV has addressed the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples at Rimini with a call for “faith, hope, and charity to be translated into a great cultural conversion.” In his message of 11 August to Bishop Nicolò Anselmi of Rimini, the Pope reflected on the biblical image of the desert, recalling how it was in the wilderness that Israel was betrothed to God, where freedom matured in hardship, and where monks and nuns have lived in silence on behalf of all humanity. The desert, he wrote, becomes not only a place of trial but a place of decision, of love, and of hope, transfigured by the grace of God².

Leo XIV singled out for special praise an exhibition dedicated to the martyrs of Algeria, whose self-offering he described as the authentic path of Christian mission: not self-assertion or cultural identity politics, but “self-giving to the point of martyrdom of those who, day and night, in joy and amid tribulations, worship Jesus alone as Lord.” In their sacrifice, he said, the Church’s vocation is revealed as solidarity with all humanity, overcoming indifference through imitation of the Incarnate Word².

The Pope also commended the Rimini Meeting’s long-standing emphasis on dialogue as an “exercise in listening” that prepares the “new stones” with which to build the future. He warned that when governments and international institutions fail to uphold justice, religious communities and civil society must “dare to be prophetic.” The kingdom of God, which is peace, must not be resisted, he insisted. Yet his appeal for cultural engagement was coupled with a reminder that no renewal can occur apart from the poor and the vulnerable. Without the victims of history, the hungry and thirsty for justice, widows and orphans, the young and the elderly, migrants and refugees, even the voice of creation itself, there will be no stones to build the future¹.

The Pope turned finally to the digital revolution, cautioning that it risks accentuating division unless it is inhabited creatively by Christians guided by the Holy Spirit. A faith indifferent to the desertification of the world, or complicit in it, would no longer follow Christ. The task of the Church, he said, is to allow the deserts of our age to blossom into gardens of hope and to be transfigured into the City of God².

The Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples, founded in 1980 under the inspiration of Monsignor Luigi Giussani and the Communion and Liberation movement, has long been a forum for dialogue and cultural debate. Previous popes have encouraged it: John Paul II saw its evangelising potential, Benedict XVI urged fidelity to Christ as its anchor, and Francis stressed its interreligious openness. Leo XIV’s message continues this line, but it also illustrates the unease many Catholics feel with the Rimini model. The martyrs of Algeria bore witness not to dialogue but to Christ crucified and risen, sealing their confession with blood. Their sacrifice demonstrates that the path of the Church is not cultural synthesis but the Cross. Likewise, conversion in Catholic tradition is supernatural before it is cultural: the turning of the soul by grace from sin to God. To speak of “cultural conversion” without rooting it in the necessity of repentance and sacramental life risks reducing Christianity to a programme of fraternity and development. The desert in Scripture was not a marketplace of ideas but the place where God formed His people, purified them, and prepared them to worship Him alone. If Rimini is to be more than an exchange of perspectives, it must recover that truth—that the desert blooms only when men and women embrace the Cross of Christ.

¹ CNA/ACI Prensa, “Pope Leo XIV calls for a ‘great cultural conversion’ in his greeting to Rimini meeting,” 21 August 2025.
² Holy See Press Office, “Message of the Holy Father Leo XIV to the Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples, signed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin,” 11 August 2025.