Eugenio Murrali – Vatican
Jon Fosse, Marilynne Robinson, Elizabeth Strout, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Mircea Cărtărescu, Julia Navarro, Jonathan Safran Foer, Enrico Brizzi, Colum McCann, Assaf Gavron, Phil Klay – these are just some of the many guests who came from various countries around the world.
Writers – essential teachers and role models
Many received the Pope’s speech as an act of emphasizing dignity; he called them “teachers and role models” of this “form of human expression” that is writing, and addressed them, recalling the words spoken in 1964 by Paul VI in the presence of artists: “We need you”.
Leo XIV also spoke about the importance of imagination and the vitality of writers’ thoughts. This imagination helps one put themselves in another person’s shoes, it helps with empathy. “I think writers,” commented Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson, “have the opportunity to really deeply think about the feelings involved in other people’s lives, what it would be like to experience being someone else”.
Through the eyes of another
Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt also returned to the theme of this shared feeling: “Two things struck me in Leo XIV’s speech: empathy and the mosaic,” Schmitt emphasized. “He told us that whether we are believers or not, we are creators of empathy, because writing stories means embodying a multitude of characters and bringing all these characters closer to the reader. And so, writing means getting closer to others, bringing them to life, and caring for them”.
The second image that stuck in Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s mind is the mosaic: “The writer arranges small pebbles like in a mosaic to create a great pattern, which is a novel or a play. And indeed, what matters most to us are relationships – showing relationships in a story,” the writer pointed out. “In this way, he showed us that the essence of what we do is, in fact, in complete harmony with the Gospel. I was moved and enlightened by this, and I think that even a non-believing writer will find something for themselves in this statement”.
According to Roman writer and poet Daniele Mencarelli, “The Pope proposed a whole range of concepts to be rediscovered: empathy, compassion, mercy, sharing, equality – terms that have once again become a subject of discussion in the current historical moment”.
To write for humanity
Mircea Cărtărescu, one of Romania’s leading writers, focused on the idea of truth and discovery: “Truth is beauty, and beauty is truth, as John Keats said. I completely agree with His Holiness’s words, with his message. I, too, have always written for the good of humanity, for people, for each of my readers, and also for those who do not yet read me”.
The role of truth in writing, already defined in “Magnifica humanitas” not as “a territory to defend”, but as “a good to be shared”, impressed Enrico Brizzi: “This mosaic of voices, of different cultural and existential paths,” he noted, “was gathered here in the name of one principle: to tell honestly, not to create confusion, but to try to shed light on areas of reality that would otherwise remain inaccessible”.
