Pope Leo XIV to visit San Marino, address Rimini Meeting

Pope Leo XIV is scheduled to visit San Marino on Saturday, August 22, before travelling to Rimini to address the Rimini Meeting, a major Catholic-linked cultural and political gathering on Italy’s Adriatic coast.

The pope is due to spend the morning in San Marino, a 60-square-kilometre republic in the Apennine Mountains with about 33,000 people. He is scheduled to meet local authorities and hold a prayer service in the local basilica.

He is then expected to travel to Rimini for the annual gathering organised by Communion and Liberation. The event draws large summer crowds and mixes religion, culture and politics.

Leo is scheduled to speak at 4:00 pm local time. He would be the first pontiff to take part in the event since Pope John Paul II in 1982.

Other listed speakers this year include Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and Italy’s deputy prime ministers, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini.

Ahead of the address, Leo is also scheduled to visit an exhibition dedicated to St Augustine, meet people with disabilities and sick members of the faith at Rimini’s cathedral, and preside over an open-air mass at the city’s port in the early evening.