"Human existence is an inexhaustible friendship" - is the title of the 44th edition of the Rimini Meeting. 
Friendship has always been considered one of the highest manifestations of human relationships, where trust, support and love become mutual.  And we all know that friendship is something that cannot be done, cannot be demanded, it is a completely free gift that asks us to be recognized, cared for, guarded. 

 Friendship enhances the singularity, the uniqueness of the person and his truest desires, enhances the talents received through the relationship itself. In this sense, friendship overcomes individualism that leads to loneliness and is an antidote to collectivism that ends in homologation. At the same time it is not possible to talk about friendship when relationships are marked by a distraction that wants to escape and not face the drama of life.  

 A sign that friendship is true and authentic is his propensity to share the goods received, to accompany each other in the most significant experiences in the search for the true, the beautiful, the just, to help each other, correct and support one another in all aspects of life. Often friendships also create deeds, social and cultural initiatives useful for the world. Precisely for this reason that Pope Francis urges us to broaden our friendships, to make them become what he calls "social friendships". 

Meeting 2023 title is not a generic invitation to friendship, it is an invitation to rediscover  the origin of that friendship in particular that is born from the Christian experience. "Human existence is an inexhaustible friendship" means that the person as a person is invested by a friendship that comes from the very Mystery that called him into existence. This call full of "a passion for the person" – so the title of the 2022 Meeting – is what makes the friendship in which It want to involve us inexhaustible. Friendship is inexhaustible because its source is inexhaustible. 

 This year's Meeting therefore invites us to become aware again of this infinite and gratuitous friendship, to share it, to look at its fruits in the past and in the present, to reflect on its current and potential impact in the contemporary world, so battered by so many enmities.  

 The Meeting itself was born and reborn every year from friendship to become a ferment of new friendships, to reinvigorate already consolidated friendships. In its next edition, the "Meeting for Friendship among Peoples" will make us present in a special way that every authentic friendship is in some way a prophecy for peace and reconciliation, because it testifies that it is possible to live together for the good of each and for the good of all, grasping differences and differences not as obstacles but as mutual enrichment.