Pope to attend 'Not Alone' international meeting on Human Fraternity

By Vatican News staff reporter

The Vatican Foundation Fratelli Tutti announced on Tuesday that Pope Francis will attend the International Meeting on Human Fraternity, entitled “Not alone” (#notalone), which will be held on 10 June at 4:00 PM in St. Peter's Square and in eight other squares in cities across the globe.

Besides the Pope, 30 Nobel Prize Laureates and thousands of young people from across the world will take part in the gathering in St. Peter's Square.

The event is organized by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation, in collaboration with St. Peter's Basilica, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and the Dicastery for Communication.

About the initiative

The initiative, inspired by the Encyclical Fratelli tutti, will involve people from all over the world. It aims to promote a culture of fraternity and peace and encourage personal commitment in choices and practices of reparation, dialogue, and forgiveness in hopes of overcoming loneliness and marginalisation that deny human dignity.

The event will be attended by an international group of young people who, at the end of the event, will hold hands and join in a giant embrace within the colonnade of St. Peter's Square, the architectural symbol of the universal embrace of the Church.

The event will also be attended by many representatives of ecclesial and lay commitment, families, and associations, as well as all those who today are forced to live on the margins of society: from the poorest and the homeless to migrants and victims of violence and human trafficking.

In addition, thanks to a memorandum of understanding signed with the Italian Ministry of Education and Merit, the meeting will present the work carried out in recent months by Italian schools on the theme of fraternity. The event is conceived as a process and experience in promoting fraternity.

What to expect

The event will be divided into two moments on 10 June: in the morning some groups will meet to share experiences of communion; these experiences will be briefly reported in the afternoon.

The Nobel Prize Laureates - who have joined the initiative - will meet together with leading figures from science, culture, law and international organisations, to draw up a document calling for commitment to human fraternity.

The document will be presented to Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square and, together with the Holy Father, to all the people in the world who feel called to build social friendship and the new paradigm of fraternity, justice and peace. The afternoon event in St. Peter's Square will begin at 4:00 PM and will be open to all, without registration.

Admission to the square will begin at 2:00 PM. Further information on the programme will be available here.

The meeting will be broadcast live on television on Vatican Media and, in streaming, on the website, and on all channels Facebook and YouTube of the Foundation Fratelli tutti.