"In the vacant places we will build with new bricks" is the title of the 2025 edition of the Rimini Meeting. The quote, taken from T.S. Eliot's 'Rock’s Choruses,' wants, first of all, to express the hope of a novelty within the drama of history, the desire to build together places in which to share the search and experience of what is true, good and just. 

During the last editions of the Meeting, we were surprised to observe the flowering of this vital impetus in response to the many 'deserts' of contemporaneity: existential loneliness, despair, resignation, cynicism, violence, and indifference as a tangible and incisive momentum. We met many people who build authentic relationships and care for those most in need, who rediscover the value of work and promote innovation in contexts of apparent stagnation, and who collaborate in searching for new perspectives where individualism has limited creativity. They are testimonies of those committed to responding to the search for meaning in an era in which existence seems to have lost its way to fullness. 

At the same time, the disproportion between any initiative, however worthy, and the vastness of the social, cultural, economic, and technological changes that challenge us every day is undeniable. It is equally evident that mere heroic courage cannot be the energy source to face what lies ahead. Paradoxically, it is gratitude that favors more than any other resource the strength and intelligence necessary to build even when everything seems to be collapsing: gratitude for the life received with all its talents, for the friendships given in their diversity of interests and temperaments, for the reality entrusted to us with a beauty that no ugliness can erase.  

Presumption makes deserts grow around us. Believing that we can build the future through a project based on mere power or a technocratic approach is an illusion. These will certainly not be the attitudes that allow us to combat desertification. 

The 2025 Meeting invites us to share experiences and construction initiatives that arise from gratuitousness and freedom. We want to discover together "new bricks" that respond to our most authentic aspirations, enriching ourselves with all the good that history has transmitted and the present offers us: an opportunity to rediscover our vocation to build our lives by taking care of the portion of the world entrusted to us.