“In deserted places we will build with new bricks”: this is the invitation to hope that will guide the 46th edition of the Meeting for Friendship among Peoples, which is about to begin in Rimini. In a message sent by Cardinal Pietro Parolin on behalf of Pope Leo XIV, the Pontiff encourages organizers and participants to recognize that the desert, an arid and often discarded place, can be transformed into a garden of hope, as Scripture tells us. The Pope expressed his appreciation for the exhibition dedicated to the martyrs of Algeria, a sign of a Church that chooses to inhabit the desert in communion with humanity, overcoming religious and cultural mistrust. The mission, he emphasized, is not self-affirmation, but self-giving to the point of martyrdom, in joy and tribulation. The Pope's words are a concrete appeal: to promote education in nonviolence, paths of mediation, and hospitality capable of transforming fear into encounter. Every community, he reminded, is called to become a “house of peace” through daily gestures of justice, forgiveness, and dialogue. Finally, the Pope invites us to combat the idolatry of profit and to face the challenges of the digital revolution with creativity and responsibility, because only together, in the Spirit, “will deserts become gardens and the future be less dark”.