Contact: Matteo Lessi (RIMINI MEETING) +39-340-4051500 matteo.lessi@meetingrimini.org;
Dino D'Agata (CROSSROADS) 301-984-5894 dc@crossroadsculturalcenter.org;
Media registration: dc@crossroadsculturalcenter.org

WASHINGTON, May 27 /Christian Newswire/ -- For the first time in America, a taste of the world's biggest summer event featuring encounters, exhibitions, music, and live performances

Justice Samuel Alito and Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon -speakers at the presentation of the 2009 Meeting

With an average attendance of over 700,000, the Rimini Meeting -- held annually in Italy since 1980 and lasting one week in August -- is the world's biggest summer festival of encounters, exhibitions, music, and spectacles. For 30 years, the event has sought to create points of contact between experiences and people of different faiths and cultures.

Previous guests include Pope John Paul II, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, Lech Walesa, Carlo Rubbia, Chaim Potok, George Smoot, Ennio Morricone, José Carreras, Jean Guitton, Luigi Giussani, Simone Veil, Martha Graham, David Rosen, François Michelin, Samuel Alito, and many other politicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, philosophers, and artists. The Rimini Meeting is organized, prepared, managed and then dismantled by the impassioned and generous efforts of volunteers, who number over 3,000 each year.

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary, the Rimini Meeting will be presented for the first time in the United States, at the Italian Embassy in Washington, DC, in collaboration with Crossroads Cultural Center. American guests from previous meetings will reflect on the significance of the Meeting, and the 2009 Meeting will be presented to the American public.

Media interested in covering the event must register at dc@crossroadsculturalcenter.org. Access to the Italian Embassy will be for registered media only.

WHAT:
"Knowledge is Always an Event" - 30 Years of the Rimini Meeting - Panel discussion

WHEN:
Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 6:00 - 8:00 PM EST

WHERE:
Embassy of Italy - 3000 Whitehaven Street, NW - Washington, DC 20008

WHO:
• Justice Samuel ALITO, U.S. Supreme Court, and Mrs. Martha-Ann Alito

• Mary Ann GLENDON, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See

• Paolo CAROZZA, Associate Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School, and Commissioner, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

• Joseph H.H. WEILER, Jean Monnet Chair, NYU School of Law

• Jane MILOSCH, Senior Program Officer for Art at Smithsonian Institution

• Lorenzo ALBACETE, theologian, author, columnist

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CHECK THE CROSSROADS WEBSITE AT WWW.CROSSROADSCULTURALCENTER.ORG