Piazza della Riconciliazione in Arcidosso, Tuscany, Italy, was the site of a short public talk given by Yeshi Namkhai as a member of a panel presentation on the evening of Friday, August 29, 2025. This Encounter on Coexistence and Reconciliation was the first annual such gathering, and part of a week-long festival in Arcidosso, a town of 4,350 people and the home of Merigar West.
The event was attended by roughly two hundred people, a great many of whom were Dzogchen practitioners. The piazza is a beautiful outdoor space at the base of the old town, with dramatic natural rock giving way to multiple stories of stone houses rising up behind the speaker’s platform. Recently-renovated, the piazza was inaugurated in 2024 by the Cardinal Augusto Paolo Lojudice, Archbishop of Siena-Colle di Val d’Elsa-Montalcino, who at that time named the piazza and asked that the municipality host an annual gathering on the theme of reconciliation. During the presentation it was noted that the piazza may be the only one in Italy with the name Reconciliation.
The encounter was introduced by Mayor Jacopo Marini, who graciously welcomed the panel and recognized Rosa Namkhai, who was in the audience, as well as lauding Merigar and the MACO Museum. The mayor said that 20% of Arcidosso’s residents are foreigners, which he noted has helped the small mountain community continue despite the aging of its own local population. In addition to the foreign-born residents who are Dzogchen Community members, a large percentage of the foreign-born residents in Arcidosso are Muslim men from Bangladesh who work on farms in the area. It was noted that the unassuming little town of Arcidosso is in fact an important laboratory of sorts for cultural encounter.
The speakers, from left to right, were:
- Cardinal Augusto Paolo Lojudice, Archbishop of Siena-Colle di Val d’Elsa-Montalcino;
- Yeshi Namkhai, Spiritual Leader of the Dzogchen Community of Merigar West;
- Moderator: Renato Rossi, Deacon of the Archdiocese of Siena and Diocesan Director for Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue;
- Izzedin Elzir, Imam of Florence; and
- Anna Scattigno, a professor and the President of the David Lazzaretti Study Center, a center dedicated to the study of the 19th-century charismatic preacher and visionary who created a community of devoted followers near Arcidosso.
Photo by Domenico Fasciano
Each speaker addressed the theme of coexistence and reconciliation, providing guidance on how to encounter one another directly, thereby “countering the violence that divides with the strength of their testimony,” as one regional news source put it. (source: Il Giunco https://www.ilgiunco.net/evento/testimonianze-di-pace-ad-arcidosso-un-confronto-pubblico-tra-religioni-e-culture/). Several speakers lifted up the power of specific words to divide or to connect us. At the end of the event Merigar presented the panelists with gifts of appreciation on behalf of the Dzogchen Community.
September 1, 2025 by A. Caroline Hotaling
