Festival of Friendship 2026
The Festival will be held on: September 18-20, 2026
Theme to be announced May 2, 2026
The theme of the Festival of Friendship is meant to be a response and dialogue with the New York Encounter.
To be kept up-to-date on the 2026 Festival of Friendship and be notified on our theme, sign up for our contact list below.
The Festival of Friendship is a multi-day cultural gathering held each year in Steubenville or Pittsburgh. Its mission has remained unchanged: to bring together participants and attendees from an astonishing array of backgrounds, both cultural and religious, for a celebration of music, art, dialogue, and friendship.
Highlights from the 2020 (online) Festival of Friendship:
The Festival of Friendship 2020 kicked off with a fascinating look at the life of St Thérése of Lisieux - along with three other saints who share her name: S...
Icon writer Gracie Morbitzer is a young Catholic artist taking a fresh look at Catholic saints. As she herself says: "The Modern Saints is a series of portra...
Fr John O'Connor is a Catholic priest in Auckland, New Zealand, and the founder of Food For Faith, a website providing written and video resources for all wh...
The COVID-19 pandemic has provoked a profound re-examination of the meaning of charity, as well as our responsibilities to one another. Join us for a vigorou...
We discuss the deeper implications of the Festival's theme: "You Will Be Found." Our panelists include: Deanna Witkowski, acclaimed jazz musician and scholar...
Acclaimed jazz musician - and scholar of the music of Mary Lou Williams - Deanna Witkowski offers a fabulous selection of music from jazz great Mary Lou Will...
Artist, Teacher, and Fine Arts Department Chair at Providence Academy in Plymouth, Minnesota, Christopher Santer highlights the beauty and mystery of the nat...
Minnesota singer-songwriter Tommy T will share with Festival-goers his newly-released album, A Cosmos. A Chaos. With an eclectic mix of ambient, alternative,...
Last year, Brooklyn-based filmmaker Simonetta d'Italia-Wiener traveled to the southern hemisphere to document the experience of APAC, a network of reform pri...
As a virus that disproportionately affects the elderly, COVID-19 has refocused our attention on the special vulnerabilities experienced by the elderly. More ...
A phenomenal program of poetry and prose - read by the authors! Suzanne M. Wolfe, novelist, author of The Confessions of X and The Course of All Treasons; Ew...
As President of the California Institute of the Arts, Ravi Rajan is at the nexus of the worlds of higher education and the arts. He will offer us an enlighte...
In Pope Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, he speaks of "the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive...
A moving song cycle performed by Angel Riley, soprano, with Lucy Tucker Yates accompanying on piano. As Composer Richard Danielpour himself recounts: "A Woma...
Five religious congregations, associations, and spiritual institutes draw inspiration from the peaceful, largely hidden, yet hospitable life that characteriz...
Stephen Lewis, Professor of English, Franciscan University; Steve Kramp, Professor & Chair of Theology and Humanities, John Paul II University; Ewa Chrusciel...
Mary Mirrione began working with as a coordinator of Children's Catechesis 1992 at St Anne's in Gilbert, Arizona. She was sent by her Pastor to learn more ab...
A musical moment of discovery and hope: authentic samba was born in the homeless shacks, or favelas, of Brazil, where music and dance become expressions of a...
Philosopher Simone Weil once wrote: "Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separa...
It's a fascinating yet challenging time to be a writer or editor. With innumerable streaming and self-publishing options available, perhaps it has never been...
