A deeper way of engaging with the world

The term “culture of encounter” is used seven times in the English translation of Pope Francis’s 2020 Encyclical Fratelli Tutti — and the word “encounter” and its cognates appear another forty times. Eighteen months after the Encyclical’s publication, however, “culture of encounter” is still one of the more elusive concepts of Francis’s pontificate: less familiar than “mercy” and “mercy-ing,” less vivid than the image of the Church as a “field hospital,” less practical-seeming than “care for our common home.” But a conference held in Rome last week set out to change that situation, and the three dozen of us participants were left with a robust sense of the meaning of “culture of encounter” and also with the sense that we had instantiated a “culture of encounter” through two days of meetings and conversations. The conference was ...