Pope to meet with Nobel winners, young people, to promote human fraternity

By Justin McLellan, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Francis will meet with 30 Nobel Prize winners and thousands of young people from around the world at the Vatican to promote human fraternity, a Vatican foundation announced.

The pope will participate in the International Meeting on Human Fraternity, under the theme "Not Alone," scheduled to take place in St. Peter's Square and eight other squares around the world simultaneously June 10.

The initiative, organized by the Vatican "Fratelli Tutti" Foundation, is inspired by Pope Francis' 2020 encyclical "Fratelli Tutti, on Fraternity and Social Friendship." It is meant to promote "the culture of fraternity and peace and encourage personal commitment in choices and practices of reparation, dialogue and forgiveness" to overcome the "loneliness and marginalization that deny human dignity," the foundation said in a press release May 23.

The Nobel Prize winners who have joined the initiative -- who were not named by the foundation -- will meet with leading figures from science, culture, law and international organizations to draft a document calling for a greater commitment to human fraternity and will present it to Pope Francis and "all the people in the world who feel called to take up the appeal to build social friendship and the new paradigm of fraternity, justice and peace."

Also invited to St. Peter's Square will be people "forced to live on the margins of society," including people living in poverty, homeless persons, migrants and survivors of violence and human trafficking.

At the end of the event, the young people gathered in St. Peter's Square will hold hands and "join in a big embrace in the colonnade of St. Peter's Square, the architectural symbol of the universal embrace of the church," the statement said.

Pope Francis created the "Fratelli Tutti" Foundation in 2021 to "encourage initiatives linked to spirituality, art, education and dialogue with the world, around St. Peter's Basilica and in the embrace of its colonnade," he wrote in its founding decree.