Pope to visit San Marino, address Catholic gathering in Italy

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Pope Leo XIV will travel to the tiny republic of San Marino on Saturday before attending a cultural and political event organised by an influential Catholic group at an Italian seaside resort.

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The pontiff is to spend the morning in San Marino, a 60-square-kilometre (24-square-mile) enclave of 33,000 people in the Apennine Mountains, in what will be the latest in a series of brief pastoral visits not far from home this summer.

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The trip by the pope — who rules over the world’s smallest country, Vatican City — follows one made in March to another European statelet, the principality of Monaco.

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In San Marino, the world’s oldest republic, the Chicago-born pope is to meet with local authorities before holding a prayer service in the local basilica.

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The head of the Catholic Church will then head to Rimini, a popular seaside city on Italy’s Adriatic coast, for the annual gathering of Communion and Liberation, a Christian group.

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The “Rimini Meeting” is a prominent event mixing religion, culture and politics that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every summer.

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Historically, the event was closely linked with the Christian Democratic movement, the now-defunct centrist Catholic political party that dominated Italian politics for nearly 50 years in the post-war period.

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Leo, who is scheduled to give an address at 4:00 pm (1400 GMT), will be the first pontiff to take part in the event since Pope John Paul II in 1982.

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

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Ahead of his address, the pope will visit an exhibition dedicated to Saint Augustine, the influential fifth-century Christian theologian who laid the foundations for the 13th-century Augustinian order to which Leo belongs.

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The pontiff will also meet people with disabilities and sick members of the faith at Rimini’s cathedral before presiding over an open-air mass at the city’s port in early evening.

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Leo has taken no long voyages this summer, instead venturing to Pavia, Lampedusa and Assisi for short visits.

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AFP

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