INTERVENTIONS

A World Advancing Faster Than Its Values

interventions ‒ 16 September 2026

"Community remains the greatest work of art we can create together."

On September 15 and 16, 2026, the Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon) hosted the fourth edition of Book 2.0, the international event dedicated to the future of reading and literature, organized by the Portuguese Publishers and Booksellers Association and structured around four major themes: the return to books, the relationship between culture, education, economy and health, copyright in the face of artificial intelligence, and the link between democracy and freedom.

The event brought together authors, academics, politicians, and representatives from the worlds of culture and publishing, including former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, former Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, former Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle, Feltrinelli Group CEO Alessandra Carra, and UNESCO's Assistant Director-General for Education, Qun Chen.

As part of the Education and the Human Voice session, the speech of Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, Prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, titled "A World Advancing Faster Than Its Values", was organized around three key words: listening, imagination and care — the three coordinates through which culture, in an age marked by technological acceleration, can still generate community. Referring to technological progress, he mentioned the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, highlighting that the risk is not that machines learn to tell stories, but that human beings forget why stories matter.