News of the historic visit of Pope Wojtyla to Rimini and San Marino
The John Paul II International Center for the Social Magisterium of the Church recalls the event that not only gave enormous resonance to the event born from the Rimini community of CL, but which left an indelible mark on the host city and on the Titan. And in particular he relaunches the words of the pontiff on the defense of the family and human life.
Period Mayor of Rimini Zeno ZaffagniniBishop Msgr. Giovanni Locatellithere was still, alive and well, the Popular Movement, the family was strongly thematized in the fair halls and to talk about it had been called Carlo Caffarra, at the time “only” president of the “John Paul II” Institute at the Pontifical Lateran University. The political star responds to the name of Giulio Andreottiwho gathered the enthusiasm of the crowd of CL, spoke among the others Sergio Zavolithe Archbishop of Ravenna Msgr. Ersilio Tonini, don Francesco Ricci. The journalons recounted the event in a polemical way and did not moderate anything, as happens in the last editions, and often in the ranks of the meetings they were always figures expressing the organizing subject. Four decades have passed and the Meeting (born in 1980), Italy, Europe and the world, have changed. But to read today the message that was launched in that far away 1982 it also seems calibrated on our time: «Humanity needs to rediscover things and experiences, facts and testimonies that allow, in the current situation, to repeat and experience that being human is possible; that building the world, one’s own identity in history is possible. In short, it is possible to rise from the barbarism of which not only our society but the whole world is pregnant, to rise again from war, from injustice, from inhuman conditions of life ». Barbarism has come a long way, in the war we are in it with both feet and remain men is a challenge for titans, more demanding every day. At the 2022 Meeting the name of John Paul II did not resonate within the Fair. The memory of that fact is rekindled by the John Paul II International Center for the Social Magisterium of the Churchdriven by Marco Ferrini.
«Forty years have passed since Pope Saint John Paul II’s visit to Rimini, for the third edition of the Meeting for friendship among peoples, and to San Marino (29 August 1982).
It is difficult, for those who lived that day, to circumscribe the memory in a few lines, given the crowd of feelings, emotions, emotion. A historically important day, not only for our province and for the Republic of San Marino: for the first time a Pope went to speak to a reality of the Catholic laity (the newly born Meeting) and to the small but important State symbol of freedom .
Not the words are important, but the facts that follow the words: that visit contributed decisively to building a people, no one can deny it. Of course, in the meantime in these decades the world has changed, the Church has changed, many things have changed. But the footprint given by the pilgrim Pope on the sand and on the rock has remained and is still recognizable. We limit ourselves to recalling only two points of content », the International Center attacks.
“The concluding part of the speech to the participants in the third edition of the Meeting for friendship among peoples (held in the pavilions of the old Fair, where today stands the supermarket adjacent to the Rotonda named after Don Luigi Giussani) is very current, as well as memorable. :
«Today’s man is strongly committed to reformulating the relationship with the world around him; with science and technology. He wants to discover ever new resources for his life and for coexistence among peoples; he tends to carry out a process that everyone would like to be peaceful and to exalt art as of free creativity. Despite this, peace today is seriously threatened, science and technology risk generating an imbalance charged with negative consequences in the relationship between man and man, between man and nature, between nations and nations. From this contradiction, which seems unstoppable because it is structurally connected to the mystery of evil, it is necessary that our gaze turn “to the architect of our salvation” to generate a civilization that is born of truth and love. The civilization of love! In order not to agonize, in order not to be extinguished in unbridled selfishness, in blind insensitivity to the pain of others. Brothers and sisters, build this civilization without ever getting tired! It is the delivery that I leave you today. Work for this, pray for this, suffer for this! “
«Saint Paul II is today and will be present in the future by millions of women and men in the world, for many reasons. But the battle for which he will historically be spent the most is with all evidence that he wanted to face in order to defend family and life in the contemporary.
He said it in the homily of the Mass in Serravalle (San Marino) that 29 August 1982, with words that sound today like a warning not to be put away:
«The family, cell of society, based on fundamental marriage. This, in fact, was elevated by Christ Jesus to the dignity of a sacrament to strengthen and sanctify the love of the spouses, wanted by God indissoluble and faithful from the origins of humanity, as the institution that derives from it. “Therefore let man not separate what God has joined together” (Mk 10: 9). The conjugal union cannot and must not be affected by any human authority; this is true whether marriage is considered from a natural or a sacramental point of view.
For these reasons, the Church can neither change nor diminish her own teaching on marriage and the family; it deplores every attempt both against the unity of marriage and against its indissolubility, such as divorce.
The Church also clearly affirms that marriage, by its very nature, must be open to the transmission of human life, when Providence makes a gift of it, and in any case respectful of it from conception. Such is the sublime procreative mission entrusted by God to the spouses; it involves, together with a very high responsibility, an excellent dignity guaranteed by God himself. “
The John Paul II International Center for the Social Magisterium of the Church, recalling the fortieth anniversary of the Saint’s visit to Rimini-San Marino, wants to reaffirm the ever new relevance of his message, and particularly on the themes of the family and life, not by chance. just today at the center of heated debates in Italy, in Europe, in the world.
Forty years later, the Center joins the prayer concluded by John Paul II in the homily Mass in Piazza Boscovich at the port so that “all of creation, even in this difficult contemporary world, may be renewed, through our faith and our service, the Primacy of Good! ».