At the Rimini Meeting, writers Colum McCann, Javier Cercas, and Dr. Paolo Ruffini share their thoughts on the power of stories to unite people and build communion where division seems to prevail.
By Guglielmo Gallone – Rimini
“I don’t know where a story begins. But I do know that, for it to be born, one must be open. Open to contradiction. We live in a world sick with certainties. Everyone clings to iron certainties; everyone is always sure they know, sure they understand everything. Yet I think that the distance between two people is always only a story. And the essence of a story is to get some sort of truth where I acknowledge you exist and you acknowledge I exist, and that’s incredibly important. We don’t necessarily have to love one another, but if we fail to understand one another, each with the other, then we are doomed. That is why stories can wash the feet of the world.”
This was the response of Irish-born American writer Colum McCann when asked where a story begins.
The setting was the fourth day of the Rimini Meeting, on Sunday, August 24, when one of the most intense and moving events of the Meeting took place.
Together with Mr. McCann, Spanish writer Javier Cercas and Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication—moderated by Italian journalist Linda Stroppa—sought to trace the contours of a kind of communication that can build communion. Theirs was no easy task in a world increasingly marked by conflicts and polarizations, propaganda, and deceitful simplifications.
The encounter began precisely with this question: can we still communicate with hope?
“Not only can we, but we must,” Dr. Ruffini began. “But we have to search for it, hope. That is the issue, though it is not easy because we are constantly blinded by evil. In newspapers, on television, on social media: evil sparkles, while the stories that tell of good seem buried. Our task, then, is to seek, to tell, and to share stories that show how—even where it seems nothing can be done or hoped for—that is not the case. All this is of use to Catholics, certainly, but it is of use to the whole world. To be Catholic does not mean to live within a boundary.”
Mr. Cercas’s invitation was “to return to the most basic thing: let us tell the truth. We must do it for an evangelical reason: the truth will set us free, which means lies make us slaves. Today we live in a time when lies have an enormous power of diffusion. In politics, in public life, everywhere.”
“The problem is not technology: when man invented writing, everyone, Plato included, said we would forget what we thought; the same was said at the invention of the printing press; and then with the invention of television, people claimed culture would disappear,” said Mr. Cercas. “None of this happened, because it all depends on how we use technology and, today in particular, artificial intelligence.”
Mr. McCann admitted that “we have always lived in difficult times, but this one seems especially complex because the process of repairing certain problems is increasingly difficult.”
He suggested that, precisely for this reason, we must “learn to slow down. We must focus on repair, on healing. And that can happen only through mutual knowledge. Listening to the other is not easy, but it is beautiful. We must do this with those who are different from us, but we must not forget to do it also, and above all, within our own communities. In families, in schools, in universities.”
He said the role of the Church emerges at this juncture, stressing that the Church is “both local and global. Pope Francis has left us precisely this message of communication, of encounter, of listening: I recognize you. I see you.”
Mr. Cercas did not hesitate to add that “the Church today must change its language, because it has a linguistic problem. Christianity is revolutionary because it changed the way of being in the world. The paradox is that today the Church fails to communicate the social revolution of Christ. The Church’s language is old. It is not attractive; it is not vital.”
Dr. Ruffini said he did not fully agree: “There is a problem of language, certainly, but language comes after things. The Church is either communion or it is nothing. And this communion, this single body, does not concern only the Church. It concerns believing that we are all sons and daughters of God. If we live this way, our words are meaningful. But if two people say they love each other and do not, they can say ‘I love you’ in any possible way, yet those words do not speak. This, I believe, is the point on which the Church must rediscover the beauty of communion.”
Mr. Cercas warned that the risk is that “not even Catholics will understand what the Church means. Let me give a concrete example. One of the fundamental words of Bergoglio’s pontificate has remained misunderstood: synodality. The Church has not managed to explain what it is. And, even more, it lacks something very important that we must learn from Pope Francis: a sense of humor, irony.”
The Spanish writer recalled “the act of tenderness the Church showed me, inviting me to take part in Pope Francis’s journey and to write a book about it, Il folle di Dio alla fine del mondo (Milan, Guanda, 2025), despite the fact that I am a non-believer. Francis told everyone to take risks. And this was a risk for the Church, while for me it was a great undertaking: I had to clean away my prejudices. Very many people, all over the world but especially in Catholic countries such as Italy, Spain or Ireland, carry enormous prejudices against the Church and the Vatican. Writing such a book required enormous work from me: to see, without automatic judgments, what is really happening, who these people are, what the Church is doing today. This is what we writers do: we de-automatize reality. As if we were seeing it for the first time. And so everything becomes surprising.”
Yet, in order for that to happen, Mr. McCann concluded, “we writers must have humility. The role of novelists or poets should not be privileged. Journalists have an enormous role, possibility and responsibility, but one must be careful: facts are mercenaries, they are easily sold. Yet there are things that are not based on facts: love, pride, sacrifice, violence. These are what we must analyze. To do this, a journalist, a writer, a novelist cannot remain closed in on himself or live apart from others. He must go out into the street, meet people, tell stories that work even when he does not want to tell them. We must make the effort to tell stories, even simple ones, but capable of revealing human simplicity. It depends only on us.”
