Tomorrow the Pope will be at the Rimini Meeting. It’s easy to predict what he’ll say

Rome. “L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle” is the title of the 2026 edition of the Rimini Meeting, which opens today, and this love around which everything will revolve is the Pope’s visit tomorrow afternoon. Leo XIV, who entered his second year of his pontificate just a few months ago, immediately accepted the invitation to attend the event, forty-four years after the first and only Pope to have set foot at the Meeting: at that time it was John Paul II, who was delighted to wander amongst the stands, to speak, to answer the questions put to him and even to sing in Polish. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then; the world is different, and the Church, too, is not the same as it was in 1982. Back then, the movements were an integral part of Wojtyła’s strategy to restore strength and vigour to a Church that had emerged from the post-conciliar turmoil not exactly in splendid form. There was talk – much as there is today – of a crisis of faith, a collapse in vocations and secularisation. The Pope from the East saw in those vast reservoirs of active and dynamic Christians, brimming with ideas and animated by an unexpected creative spirit, the driving force to change the course of a history that had become all too predictable and taken for granted. Almost half a century later, very little is known about what Leo XIV thinks of the movements and their role in the world and in the Church. Last year, when he received them in St Peter’s Square on the occasion of the Jubilee dedicated to them, he said nothing that suggested a clear vision of their mission at this juncture of fluid or collapsed values. Nor, in the various – albeit few – institutional meetings with the leaders of the movements, have any particularly original or distinctive insights emerged. Perhaps this is a deliberate choice, following the seismic upheavals caused by Pope Francis, who – addressing the movements, including Communion and Liberation but also others, in a tone certainly not steeped in clerical sentimentality – demanded a re-evaluation of the meaning of the word ‘charism’, having admonished the members of ‘Communion and Liberation’ at the start of his pontificate (in 2015) not to turn into “museum guides or worshippers of ashes”. Don Giussani, the Pope added, “would never forgive you for that”. It was a warning – greatly underestimated at the time – about what would come to pass years later. In any case, all eyes are now on Leone: this year’s Meeting will inevitably revolve around his address tomorrow afternoon, which, exceptionally, will be broadcast live in all four main halls, the five arenas and on the eleven additional screens specially set up for the occasion. Leone XIV will arrive at the exhibition centre from San Marino (he will be making an official visit to the small state in the morning, whilst in the late afternoon he will first visit the cathedral in Rimini and then the harbour, where he will celebrate Mass) at 2.45 pm. Shortly afterwards, he will visit the exhibition on St Augustine and the one on Léon Harmel, then greet the participants and, at 4 pm, take the floor in the Grand Auditorium. It will be a short speech (twenty minutes at most), which is likely to disappoint those hoping to read between the lines to understand what the American Pope thinks of the movements, or of CL in particular. Robert Prevost is familiar with the Meeting; he attended it years ago – incognito – when he was not even a bishop. He went there because he appreciated an environment where dialogue and friendship between peoples could flourish – cornerstones of his pontificate that recur in every speech, homily and post on X. It is likely that the Augustinian who became Pope will reflect on this before a fervently expectant crowd.