We are building this year’s Meeting in a historical moment that makes us aware that peace and civilisation are not at all obvious and do not arise from an automatism that once started reproduces itself.

The war against Ukraine, in its shocking brutality, like so many other cruel wars in more distant places, tell us that peace needs to be built and sought after day by day by free people in search of what is true, what is right, overcoming prejudices and ideologies.

The urgency of an ecological transition, the search for a more sustainable economy, and above all, the great challenges in education, make us aware that society itself needs to be built relentlessly in a continuous renewal of relationships.

An authentically human humanity exists only if it lives on responsibility, solidarity, and charity—born and reborn out of freedom—and which in turn, continuously nourish that freedom.

Without this humanity, without this culture, people become barbarians.

This culture cannot be seen but it can be met, it cannot be seen but it will generate civilisation, and civilisation can change the world.

The meeting has always been a place of culture. The Meeting builds culture, so that everyone can discover and rediscover a passion for their lives and can discover and rediscover being called with this passion to build the “civilisation of love” to which St. John Paul II invited us to do at the Meeting in 1982, 40 years ago now.