Alejandro G. Roemmers (Buenos Aires, 1958) is a poet, writer and philanthropist recognized with the St. Francis of Assisi Prize, which led him to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death with the initiative A Hug for Humanity. The tribute took the form of a musical gathering held in Italy.
Now honored with the “Madrid, Capital of Ibero-America” award in the Cultural Initiative category, Roemmers champions love, empathy and fraternity in this interview as essential values for building a more humane society, and reflects on how to carry them into his literature and his social initiatives.
Alejandro G. Roemmers, you have received the St. Francis of Assisi Prize, and you are the only layperson ever to receive this honor. What does it mean to you, and what responsibility do you feel it carries?
Receiving the St. Francis of Assisi Prize has been an immense honor for me and, above all, a deeply moving one. Being the only layperson to receive it also gives it a very special meaning, because I understand it as a recognition that transcends any religious affiliation and speaks to universal values we can all share.
But recognition like this also implies responsibility. The figure of St. Francis invites us to look beyond ourselves and to live with fraternity, humility, and respect for others and for nature. Receiving an award that bears his name encourages me to keep trying to carry those principles into my projects and, above all, into my own life.
That is why it was so special to be able to accompany that recognition with the gathering held in Assisi, bringing together music, fraternity and a message of peace in one of the places most closely linked to the life of St. Francis.
To mark the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, you launched A Hug for Humanity. Why do you think it is necessary today to reclaim a gesture as simple as a hug?
Precisely because it is simple and universal. A hug needs no translation, ideology or explanation. During the gathering we held in Assisi, in front of the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, we wanted to turn that idea into something very concrete. While the Santa Cecilia Symphony Orchestra performed Canticle of the Creatures and All Brothers, we invited everyone present to join in a fraternal embrace.
It was especially moving to do it in a place so closely linked to St. Francis and his message of fraternity. Seeing different people, believers and non-believers, come together through music and end up embracing one another shows that we still need spaces that remind us of what we share.
A Hug for Humanity was born precisely from that: at a time when everything seems to push us to define ourselves by what divides us, it reclaims a gesture that reminds us that, before our nationalities, beliefs or cultures, we are human beings.
After the St. Francis of Assisi Prize and A Hug for Humanity, what would you like to remain once the media attention these events generate has faded?
The Assisi concert was a very special moment: bringing together sixty musicians and a choir in front of the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli, hearing Canticle of the Creatures and All Brothers, and then seeing so many people join that collective embrace was deeply moving. But the important thing is precisely that the message doesn’t end when the music does.
Events pass, and so does media attention, but ideas can endure. I would like what remains to be that invitation to reclaim fraternity in our daily lives: to listen more, judge less, reach out to those who think differently, and once again devote time to the people close to us.
I don’t aspire for my name to remain associated with an initiative. What I hope remains is what we tried to express in Assisi: that we have far more in common than we sometimes think.
You often speak about reclaiming certain human values. Which do you think are especially under threat today?
I am particularly concerned about the loss of listening, of empathy, and of the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. We live in a great hurry and are subjected to an enormous number of stimuli. That can lead us to react before we understand, and to judge before we know.
I also believe we must reclaim the value of gratitude, solidarity and time spent together. Not because these values have disappeared, but because they need spaces in which to express themselves. And our current way of life doesn’t always allow us to pause and cultivate them.
Human values are a constant in both what you say and what you write. How do you bring them into literature without the message overpowering the story?
For me it’s essential that literature not become a sermon. When I write, I’m not trying to tell readers how they should live or what they should think. I try to tell a story that moves them and that, through the characters and what happens to them, can awaken certain questions.
Values work when they are a natural part of the story. Friendship, love, generosity or the search for meaning don’t need to be constantly explained, because they are part of our experience as human beings.
I believe that is precisely literature’s power: it can make us reflect without imposing an answer on us.
To what extent do you think technology and social media are changing the way we relate to one another and build real bonds with others?
They are changing it profoundly. Technology has given us extraordinary possibilities, and it would be absurd to deny it. It allows us to maintain long-distance relationships, access knowledge and communicate in ways that just a few decades ago seemed impossible.
The problem arises when we confuse being connected with being accompanied. A bond needs time, attention, listening and presence. No technological tool can fully replace that.
I don’t think we have to choose between technology and human relationships. The challenge is to make the former serve the latter.
Your documentary Screen Addicts deals precisely with our relationship with digital devices. At what point did you realize that screen use had stopped being merely a technological issue and had become a social problem?
When I understood that we were no longer talking simply about a tool we used, but about something that was beginning to change our habits, our relationships and even the way we manage our attention.
You only have to look at some everyday scenes: entire families sitting around a table, each looking at their own phone; children who need a screen in order to eat; or people who feel anxious when a few minutes go by without checking their phone.
Screen Addicts was born from the need to ask ourselves a very simple question: are we using technology, or are we allowing it to increasingly determine how we use our time?
When it comes to children and teenagers, where would you place the responsibility: with families, schools, tech platforms or governments?
I think it would be a mistake to look for a single party responsible. It’s a shared responsibility.
Families play an essential role because our first habits are formed at home. Schools must provide the tools to understand and use technology properly. Governments must give special protection to minors, and platforms cannot wash their hands of the consequences of the products they design.
But there is something we must not forget: we adults are the first example. We can’t ask young people to have a healthy relationship with screens if we ourselves are unable to put our phones aside.
Does it worry you that we are raising a generation with practically unlimited access to information but greater difficulty paying attention, reading in depth or tolerating boredom?
Yes, because having access to more information doesn’t necessarily mean understanding the world better. We have never had so much knowledge instantly available, but that is precisely why we need to learn to pause, select, go deeper and reflect.
And I would especially stand up for something that seems negative today: boredom. As children, many of our creative moments arose precisely because we had nothing to do. We invented games, stories, worlds. If we fill every second with stimuli, we risk losing the space where imagination appears.
Faced with this scenario, do you think literature can serve as a space of resistance against the immediacy that screens impose?
Absolutely. Reading demands something that is increasingly scarce: sustained attention. A book forces us to stop, to imagine, and to live for a while alongside other voices and other lives.
But I don’t like to frame it as a war between books and screens. Literature doesn’t have to compete with technology. It has to remind us that there is another way of relating to time.
When young people discover a book that truly moves them, they stop thinking of reading as an obligation. They enter a story and want to stay there. That discovery is still possible today, exactly as it was fifty or a hundred years ago.
In The Return of the Young Prince, you offer a perspective on values such as friendship, love, generosity and the meaning of life. Would you write that book the same way today as when it was born?
Probably not exactly the same way, because one is not exactly the same person either. Every experience transforms us and changes the way we see the world.
However, I believe I would keep its essence intact. In The Return of the Young Prince I pose questions that don’t belong to any particular era: what it means to love, what value friendship holds, how we find our place in the world, or what we do with our dreams.
Perhaps some words or situations would change, but not what I wanted to convey. In fact, in a society as fast-paced as today’s, I believe many of those questions are even more necessary.
Your career combines literature, philanthropy and social initiatives. Is there a common thread running through all these facets, or do you see them as separate spheres?
There is a very clear common thread, and it is love. I believe love can manifest itself in many different ways and that, deep down, everything we do should stem from the desire to give the best of ourselves and help improve the world around us.
At 14, I wrote my poem Eternally in Love, which begins with an invitation to love without limits or distinctions. Those words still define the way I understand life.
For me, loving doesn’t just mean feeling affection for someone. It also means helping, sharing, listening, understanding and placing oneself at the service of others. It is a way of being in the world.
That’s why I have never considered literature, philanthropy or social initiatives to be separate activities. They are different ways of expressing the same conviction. Through literature I try to convey emotions and reflections; through philanthropy I seek to turn that feeling into concrete action; and with initiatives like A Hug for Humanity I want to remind us that we are all united by something far deeper than our differences.
I believe that is also one of the great messages of St. Francis of Assisi: that love must not remain in words, but must show itself in our relationship with others and with everything around us.
