A challenge on the Profound Meaning of Life
Julán Carrón - A Conversation with Don Julián Carrón on the book Credere (Believing) October 17, 2025 – Belluno, Palazzo Crepadona
Ilario Tancon: Good evening, and welcome. We are here in this splendid setting—the Crepadona—in the heart of Belluno’s historic center. This is a place dedicated to culture and reading, but also to reflection, conversation, and debate—exactly what we are here for tonight. This event is organized by the Charles Péguy Association in collaboration with the Municipality of Belluno.
We are facing a topic that is difficult, certainly challenging, but also exciting and engaging. It is decisive, one way or another, for the life of each of us. The topic is the title of the book itself, born from a conversation between Don Julián Carrón—who has returned to Belluno after a few months, and whom we welcome back with great pleasure—and one of Italy's most renowned philosophers, Umberto Galimberti.
Believing. Faith. It is a challenging, thrilling subject, but difficult to handle for obvious reasons, not least because it isn't easy to discuss faith in the public square. I believe the Charles Péguy Association deserves praise for bringing such a provocative topic to a public venue, right here in the city center. For the few who don’t know, the Charles Péguy Solidarity Center was founded twenty-five years ago. It operates here in Belluno with initiatives dedicated to people in fragile situations, but it also offers moments of reflection, like last December’s event at the municipal theater: “Living in Our Time.” That, too, was an engaging and challenging evening.
The Crepadona is hosted by the Municipality of Belluno, represented by its mayor, Oscar De Pellegrin. I’ll hand the microphone to him for a welcome.
Oscar De Pellegrin: Thank you, and good evening everyone. A special welcome back to our guest. I’ll be brief, as I must respect the rules of electoral silence. I simply want to thank Julián Carrón. Even though our conversation in December was brief—half an hour—it was intense. He conveyed something special to me, something truly important. We have remained in contact, and I thank him because his return to Belluno proves that our encounter left a mark. Our life is made up of signs, and this is a sign that, in my view, is positive.
Thank you again for being here. Perhaps we will have a chance to talk directly later. And thank you all for being here tonight to touch on a truly decisive theme: “Believing.” Believing is fundamental in everything we do in life. Thank you, have a good evening, and enjoy the talk.
Tancon: Thank you to Oscar De Pellegrin, mayor of our provincial capital. I am now happy to pass the microphone to the president of the Charles Péguy Solidarity Center, Rudy Zerbinati. I like to recall that Charles Péguy was once defined as a “philosopher of crisis” but also a “poet of hope.” I believe these are the tracks on which the pages of this book run. Over to you, Rudy.
Rudy Zerbinati: Thank you. I, too, welcome you and thank you for coming in such large numbers. I want to thank the Mayor, who promoted and strongly desired this meeting, and above all, I thank Julián Carrón for visiting us again so soon to engage in this dialogue. This evening is intended to be a dialogue on the questions each of us carries within—questions to which, so often, we do not pay due attention.
Tancon: Thank you, Rudy. And thank you again, Julián, for your presence. So: a conversation, a dialogue with Umberto Galimberti. Is it actually possible to dialogue with a person whose positions are truly distant from your own? What was this dialogue like?
Julián Carrón: I want to thank the Cultural and Solidarity Center and the Mayor. It is a pleasure to return to Belluno to see you all again. What you said is true: our last meeting was a brief but very intense dialogue, which is why I couldn't say no to the invitation.
Yes, a dialogue with a figure like Umberto Galimberti is a challenge. First, because as you said, he holds a position—you can see this by reading the book—that is very different from mine. He has another approach to life, centered on his being “Greek,” as he defines himself. At the same time, it is precisely encounters like this that fascinate me. They are an opportunity to measure myself against people with different perspectives. I have always enjoyed engaging with the “other” because it is an opportunity to verify if the reasons I live by actually hold water—especially in a dense, profound dialogue like the one with Galimberti. I let myself be challenged by the reasoning of such a demanding thinker. So, for me, these kinds of encounters are always a joy.
Tancon: Was the book we presented last December (Living in Our Time) also a dialogue? Have you never been tempted by monologue?
Carrón: In the case of the dialogue with Galimberti, we were in the middle of the pandemic. We were summoned to the publishing house in Segrate, put in front of a camera, and a journalist began to ask us questions. We only knew the underlying issue was faith—believing—but we didn't know where the “bull” would charge from, as we say in Spain. You enter the bullfight without knowing what will happen. So, everything was alive, unexpected, nothing pre-packaged. Everything you read in the book, even if edited carefully later, came about this way: in a dialogue without boundaries.
Tancon: That is perhaps one of the things missing in our time today, isn't it?
Carrón: Yes, unfortunately. Instead, I think it is one of the most appropriate conditions for a true confrontation. We are called not to shout or oppose each other dialectically, but to give reasons for our position, in dialogue with the other.
Tancon: Perhaps the fear of dialogue stems from a lack of trust. I was struck by the beginning of the book, where you discuss trust versus suspicion—even in everyday things. You mention a student who got angry... could you tell us about that? regarding trust, you write: “Without trusting or relying on someone, we could not move, no one could live, even in the most trivial things of everyday life. Trust is the oil that lubricates all the gears.“ Giussani, your teacher, said: ”A great, mature man is recognized by his ability to trust." However, perhaps at this moment in history, trust does not exactly pervade our daily lives.
Carrón: Not at all. Often there is no trust. Yet it characterizes everyday life. Last week, I was teaching a class at a design high school in Como. The philosophy teacher had begun addressing “faith and reason” and asked if I would speak with the students. I began by asking them for their perception of faith, and then their perception of reason. Everyone agreed that faith is characterized by trust. But I was struck by one student who defined faith as trust without foundation in reality.
I kept her answer in mind. The next day, I resumed the lesson: "It's 10:30 in the morning. Can each of you tell me how many acts of trust you have performed since you got up?"
They began to answer: one got on the bus without asking the driver for his license or safety inspection; another drank water, trusting it was potable...
Tancon: Someone probably trusted the mother who made them breakfast...
Carrón: Exactly. We got there, too. Another listened to the teacher explain history. So I said, “You see? Now, tell me: did all these gestures lack a basis in reality? Did you do them out of blind trust, or because you had reasons to trust?” Obviously, they had every reason to trust.
We began to dialogue. I asked, "What would be the most obvious sign that you had no reason to trust? Imagine the Roman Empire: the emperor couldn't trust that no one poisoned his wine, so he wouldn't even take the first sip. He had a slave taste it first. Then he had good reason to trust, because someone else drank it and lived.“
They realized that in all their gestures, they had reasons to trust; they had a foundation in reality. So I challenged the girl who said faith is trust without a basis: ”Look at the experience you had this very morning. Think about how many things we trust just to live one day after another! Trust can have a reasonableness. And when you don't trust, you know why."
Then I told them about an episode from the beginning of my teaching career. I started a lesson by writing the word “Gospels” on the blackboard. Immediately, a student turned around, ready to provoke me: “You don't think we can understand anything about Jesus this way, do you?!”
I replied, “Oh, really? In your opinion, is suspicion the most reasonable position?”
“Of course,” he retorted. “I'm not naive.”
I said, “It's obvious you're not naive. In fact, this morning, when your mother put your latte in front of you, you refused to drink it until she proved it wasn't poisoned, right?”
I remember his reaction as if it were today. He, the theorist of suspicion, was furious: "How dare you say that about my mother! I've been living with my mom for 16 years!“
I replied, ”That means you have 16 years of reasons to trust your mother, but you don't have even a minute of relationship with the Gospels to be able to trust them. What is the difference between the position you took this morning in front of your latte and your reaction to the word ‘Gospels’? The lack of adequate reasons to trust them."
Tancon: And where can these reasons be found?
Carrón: Perfect, that's the question. The real question of faith is finding adequate reasons to trust. Everyone can find this in their own life.
Tancon: Julián Carrón, where did you find them?
Carrón: I found them in my own experience. From an early age, I had a sense of mystery that led me to seek, and I had the opportunity to verify the reasons for the faith passed on to me. I trusted, in the sense that I verified what I had received as a working hypothesis. Not blindly, but wielding faith as a hypothesis for entering into reality. I was able to see that, by accepting the proposal of faith, life was more life.
This is, after all, what Jesus says in the Gospel. How does he propose we follow him? “Whoever follows me will have a hundredfold here on earth.” He does not say, “Follow me, regardless of everything, because I tell you so.” He performed signs. People could be filled with reasons by seeing the facts: the way he looked at things, his way of relating to reality, of treating people, of living life. Just as the boy in the café saw his mother, so Jesus, after showing who he was, could say, “Whoever follows me will have a hundredfold here on earth,” and the disciples could say, “We have never seen anything like this!”
Tancon: Today, though, faith is perceived by many almost as an anesthetic. Not as something to be experienced here, but as something that shifts the horizon to a world to come—whether you call it “paradise” or something else.
Carrón: But this is not the Christian faith! Let's clarify the concept right away. Christian faith is recognizing in the present something so unique—so corresponding to man's expectation of being looked at in a certain way—that one believes because of that fact!
It is like finding the person with whom you decide to share your life. You don't marry for what will happen in the future; you marry for the reasons you have in the present, for the encounter with a presence. As soon as that presence appears—even just feeling it coming—it fills life with gratitude, with wonder, simply because that presence exists and changes your life.
Tancon: May I ask—if you want to say—who are the people who have looked at you in that way? Who filled your life?
Carrón: For me, there are many. I will mention two. One accompanied me in the most decisive moments of my maturation during college. And then, Fr. Giussani. Even though we didn’t see each other often—I lived in Madrid, he in Milan—there were a series of small but significant events that were crucial for me. Crucial to the point that I said to myself: “If I can’t believe in this person, I can’t believe in myself.”
Tancon: You spoke about the reasonableness of faith. But Galimberti’s position is clear; he quotes St. Thomas to justify a radical observation: “Faith and reason cannot, in any way, coincide.”
Carrón: That they do not coincide—because faith is one thing and reason is another—does not mean there is no relationship between them. This was the objection of the student I mentioned earlier. For her, faith was trust without adequate reasons. But as I demonstrated, she trusted the bus driver and the water because she did have adequate reasons. Faith cannot be reduced to Galimberti's conception, as if it were a leap into the void. No. Christian faith is the recognition of a present Presence.
Let's stick to the facts in the Gospels. Why did the disciples follow him? Think about Peter. At a certain point, he feels looked at in a particular way and begins to leave everything to follow Him. Who among us would leave everything behind for a stranger saying “Follow me”? It would be random.
Even when Peter had already begun to follow, he asks: “Master, we have left everything and followed you, what will we have?” Jesus makes a promise: “Whoever follows me will have a hundredfold here and eternal life.” But this implies that Peter was still missing something. He still did not fully understand who the Presence before him was.
I am amazed that after the multiplication of the loaves, everyone was excited—free food doesn't happen every day!—and they wanted to make him King. Jesus looks at them with unique tenderness and says, “Man does not live by bread alone!” He could have mocked them. But he knew that tomorrow they would need more than bread. So he says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man... you will not have life in you.” Life! Life that lasts forever.
Faced with this raising of the bar, everyone abandons him. Everyone except the Twelve. Again, Jesus doesn't use emotional blackmail. He asks: “Do you also want to leave?” Then Peter, who hadn't understood before, now answers: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life.” Words that fill life. He understood that the true answer to his thirst for fulfillment was right in front of him: it was a Presence.
The more they lived with Him, the more they became glued to Him. Each time, they filled themselves with reasons to adhere, to recognize that with that Presence, their whole life was different.
Tancon: I take another cue from Galimberti: "If I remove the word ‘God’ from the contemporary world, do I still understand reality? The word ‘God’ has been replaced by ‘technology’ and ‘money’." You insist a lot on technology. How can we put the word ‘God’ back at the center to combat this pervasive, distressing technology?
Carrón: The only way to put God back at the center is to have an experience of God so powerful that we understand the difference between what leads to life and what technology brings. We are full of devices, but has this substantially changed our lives?
I would give you all the devices in the world in exchange for a single moment of relationship with a Presence so full of meaning that it makes us grateful for the rest of the day! If you don't examine every proposal that comes your way, you will never convince yourself why technology cannot fill your life.
I am amazed that Marracash, a rapper I like for his loyalty to his own experience, says: “I would give the kids a Rolex... and then I would ask them: has it changed your life?” The question is verification.
I am convinced that without adequate reasons, no one can be persuaded. Participating formally in Church gestures is not enough to determine how we wake up each morning. A successful man recently told me he wakes up thinking: “So what? What am I supposed to do with this?” Why? Because the need for meaning cannot be satisfied by just any answer. As Marracash says: “I fill my time... and I don't fill the void.”
The problem of life is the void. If you compare yourself with everything on the horizon and ask, “What fills my void?” you will see if technology can give you a moment of fullness. We are talking about a being—the human—who realizes that everything is not enough to fill a single moment of life! Then one understands that encountering a Presence makes everything different.
Tancon: Galimberti also says we are immersed in an ocean of irrationality.
Carrón: I respond that the perspective I am talking about is full of rationality, if one lives with awareness! If one is content to live in irrationality, congratulations. I challenge him to look at his experience and see if this irrationality fills his life.
What amazes me is that intelligent people like Galimberti simply say, “This is irrational.” The irrationality spreading in reality shows that the void cannot be filled by things. When someone encounters something that fills their life, they don't need to live from irrationality to irrationality, they don't need violence or constant complaining. Fullness gives them the opportunity to enter into dialogue with everyone.
Tancon: ...So anxiety takes over.
Carrón: Anxiety takes over, which is irrationality. Reason—the need for meaning with which we are born—is not decorative. It is such a deep need that if one does not find meaning, one lives irrationally!
When we find meaning, “by chance,” as something unexpected, we immediately see the difference. There is no need for complex reasoning. As the theologian Von Balthasar says, abstract reasoning no longer convinces anyone. It doesn't work! All one needs is an experience of true fulfillment that leaves a mark. Everyone can think of a recent time when something happened that left a mark, to the point of waking up the next day saying, “Look what happened to me yesterday!”
Tancon: Galimberti states: “Christianity is collapsing.” Do you agree?
Carrón: A certain type of Christianity, yes. I have no problem saying that, because that is not Christianity. If Christianity is reduced to ethics, Kant is enough; we don't need Christ. We have all the “doctrines” we want, now we have artificial intelligence, but does this make life more life?
The real question is whether Christianity is truly an experience of the fullness of life. I recently read a sentence by Don Giussani that struck me: “Christianity, being a present Reality, has as its instrument of communication the evidence of an experience.”
People followed Christ because of the evidence of an experience. Today, it will be possible to follow Him only because of the evidence of an experience. Rituals are not enough. Doctrines are not enough. If Christianity is just things to do, it has no chance.
But if Christianity is the answer to the void we have inside... The real question is the one Leopardi posed. The problem with life is that one can have the whole universe and feel that “everything is small and insignificant for the capacity of the soul.” To “accuse things of insufficiency” is not a sign that we are flawed; it is “the greatest sign” of man's greatness!
All beings except man have the resources to fulfill themselves. Stars, dogs, everything is in harmony with its nature. The only one who does not find peace is man.
Tancon: Galimberti says: “Man is condemned by his freedom.”
Carrón: That's the point. Is it a condemnation or an opportunity?
If one cannot find an answer, freedom is perceived as a condemnation. But what if this greatness with which the Mystery made us is precisely the opportunity to experience the beauty of finding the Beloved?
It would have cost the Mystery nothing to create us without freedom. He could have taken away a “tiny piece” of nothing, and we would be mechanical, automatic, like the stars. It would have cost the Mystery nothing.
I once took a taxi in Milan. The driver was reading a theology book. We talked, and he began to rail against God, accusing Him of all the tragedy in the world. I said, "So, the best solution would be to take away freedom? Tell me: to prevent your wife from being unfaithful, would you prefer to be loved mechanically? Or freely?“
He didn't hesitate: ”I would like to be loved freely!“
I said, ”And do you think God has less taste than you?!"
God also prefers to be loved freely; he took the risk of this freedom. Is this a misfortune? Or is a mechanism better? Everyone must decide.
Tancon: Galimberti quotes Karl Jaspers to distinguish between the “believer” and the “militant.”
Carrón: Absolutely. The believer, if he is truly a believer, is so happy with what has happened to him that he does not need to be a militant. Only those uncertain of the attractiveness of the beauty they experience become militants.
If someone is “captivated” by an attraction, he does not need to push, to insist. It is enough to live in front of the other! When God sent his Son, Jesus was born stripped of power, placed before the world with his appeal—as I always say—of "unarmed beauty."
If one does not believe in the unarmed beauty of faith, one needs to be militant. But if one believes that beauty speaks for itself, one becomes peaceful. It is like meeting your wife: you saw an appeal and couldn't help but marry her. She didn't have to be a militant. What convinces us more: militancy or an appeal that speaks for itself?
Tancon: I am always amazed by how much beauty linked to Christianity exists in our cities. How did it come about?
Carrón: It came about thanks to believers enchanted by beauty. The question is: how can this beauty speak today?
Many visit the Scrovegni Chapel or see a Caravaggio, take a photo, and leave unmoved. Deep down, they cannot understand what is happening before their eyes. To grasp the significance of such beauty, something must have happened to them in reality, as an experience.
In order for beauty to communicate, we cannot invent a new method. It must be how the Mystery communicated itself: an incarnate Presence. St. John says: “The Word became flesh.” That art embodies a Presence that shines with attractiveness. Those who met Christ followed him, attracted by the beauty of being with him—even the tax collectors like Zacchaeus.
Tancon: Speaking of attraction, let's talk about rites. My son once told me, “Mass was invented to bore children.”
Carrón: See? If the beginning of Christianity is reduced to rituals, children get bored. It is different if they are introduced to faith as an experience.
I remember a girl listening to her mother's friends talk. She said, “When I participate in certain gestures, they don't mean anything to me.” Her mother asked, “What does this have to do with God?” She replied, “When I hear you talk, God has to do with everything.”
The problem is whether children, when they live with people who have faith, perceive something that has to do with life. Then every gesture will speak to them. In the Old Testament, Passover was explained to children as the commemoration of liberation from slavery. They talked about life. If the ritual isn't relevant to life, why should anyone believe?
The Mystery bent itself to what we can understand, becoming flesh. It became flesh to communicate through the normality of living. If it is not an experience like this, it is just a theory. Who would get married just to clean the house? No one. Young people run away from that, and rightly so. They have a taste for the real thing.
Tancon: Quoting Ratzinger, you say: “God makes himself visible in a story, in men through whom his nature is manifested.” Do you see any “consistent” men like that around today?
Carrón: I see them, absolutely. To spot them, you have to be attentive. When you meet them, there is something so striking you cannot miss it.
We have a detector inside us for what is true and beautiful. Why do people come from all over the world to Italy? To see the beauty born from the history of Christianity. They come to places where history generated people who, as Ratzinger says, are living witnesses.
Tancon: Is the crisis in the West because we have forgotten this connection?
Carrón: Everyone can see it starting with themselves. Why is interest waning? Who is Europe? It is us.
When life is urgent, we see the reaction of people who truly keep us company. We noticed this during Covid: amidst fear, we saw those who were “consistent,” who faced reality with a certainty that made the difference. We don't need a magnifying glass; it surprises us in daily life.
Tancon: Is your view of the present and future one of optimism?
Carrón: It is a view of optimism, but not because I ignore the degradation. I see it with greater awareness. But the future depends on the freedom of each person to adhere to what is beautiful.
The future is not mechanical. It is not about sentimental optimism or pessimism. The game we are playing is based on freedom. My hope lies in this: there will always be people in whom we can intercept this beauty. My hope does not depend on numbers, but on the fact that there are people testifying that it is possible to live differently.
Tancon: The book talks about the recovery of the self, of the "I," which is not selfish but enhances one's personality.
Carrón: This is crucial today. The more threats like AI and technology become present, the more urgent the consistency of the "I" becomes. Technology can cage you if you are not aware of yourself. Artificial Intelligence can confuse you if you cannot tell a donkey from a cow.
I challenge my students. I ask them, “Let's ask ChatGPT if there is a criterion for evaluating things.” ChatGPT says no. Then I ask, "Imagine your mother is sick and gets three different diagnoses. ChatGPT says there is no criterion to judge. Does this trigger anxiety?" They all say yes.
I say, "Why do you all judge it the same way, if ChatGPT says we can't?"
If we don't help them grow in self-awareness, in the recovery of the "I," they will depend on everything they hear. This isn't selfishness. It means standing in reality with self-awareness so as not to be fooled.
Tancon: So this period of crisis...
Carrón: It's exciting.
Tancon: Is it an opportunity?
Carrón: It is the opportunity! It isn't enough to have digital libraries; you need the intelligence to ask the right questions. This requires a developed humanity—a subject, an "I," capable of not being overwhelmed by fear.
You have to check everything. Is it true or fake? In the past, the urgency wasn't the same. Today, either you learn to tell the difference, or you are at the mercy of everything. We must help young people develop their full humanity, their ability to discover truth. This is my wish for all of us.
Tancon: Thank you, Julián, for your presence and for this outlook full of trust—of faith—toward the present.
Carrón: Thank you! Have a good evening.
