Pope Leo XIV urges courage at Rimini Meeting

Pope Leo XIV visited San Marino on Saturday, August 22, before addressing the Rimini Meeting in Italy and urging attendees to be “courageous pioneers” in confronting poverty and inequality.

The one-day trip ended with an open-air mass at Rimini’s port, attended by about 40,000 people, with crowds spilling onto the beach.

At the annual gathering organised by the Christian group Communion and Liberation, Leo encouraged leaders to expose what he called “unjust structures of power that lie at the root of poverty, inequality, war and environmental disasters”. He also warned about technology, saying: “Let us disarm technological development whenever it becomes invasive and destructive.”

The Rimini Meeting mixes religion, culture and politics and draws large summer crowds. Pope John Paul II was the last pontiff to visit the event, in 1982.

Earlier in the day, Leo visited San Marino, a 60-square-kilometre republic in the Apennine Mountains with about 33,000 people. He met local authorities in Piazza della Liberta and praised what he called the value of a small state “on a human scale”.

After a prayer service in San Marino, he travelled by helicopter to Rimini, visited an exhibition dedicated to Saint Augustine, met disabled and ailing members of the faith at Rimini cathedral, and later celebrated mass at the port.