Out of the gate

With just two weeks’ notice, Francesco Arezzo confidently takes the reins of Rotary International.

In the short walk between Francesco Arezzo’s makeshift office in the BMO Centre at the Rotary International Convention in Calgary and a patio outside it, enthusiastic Rotarians stop him no fewer than a dozen times. With a warm smile, Italy’s Francesco thanks two sergeants-at-arms from India, hugs and jokes with a past RI director and poses for a selfie with a group of Rotarians from Korea.

It’s the day before the start of the convention, and while all Rotary presidents draw well-wishers, there’s another reason why everybody is clamouring to meet Francesco and his wife, Anna Maria Arezzo-Criscione: He’d been appointed 2025-26 Rotary president less than a week earlier.

On the night of 14 June, Francesco, a member of the Rotary Club of Ragusa in Sicily, was sitting with his Rotary friends at his district conference when he learned of his new role. Rotary’s Board of Directors had reached the decision at a special session after the unexpected resignation of Mário César Martins de Camargo due to personal reasons and business obligations at home in Brazil.

Since the news hadn’t been officially announced, Francesco couldn’t tell anyone. But soon, he noticed phones coming out all over the room.

When the news arrived on social media at about 11pm, we were in the middle of the gala dinner,” he says. “You can imagine more than 400 Rotarians all finding out on their phones. It was quite an unforgettable moment. All of a sudden, they all lined up to kiss me and offer their congratulations.”

Two days later, he was on a plane to Canada to accept his nomination in front of the convention’s 16,000 attendees from some 140 countries.

“I didn’t even have time to have a haircut,” he says, pointing to his robust head of grey hair.

But, he says, he was ready for this moment. Having been part of Rotary for more than three decades, Francesco has served as RI director and chair of the 2023 Melbourne Convention Committee, among other leadership roles. He had applied for the RI president’s role in 2023 and was short-listed.

The Rotary world rallied around him. His touching personal stories, his humble nature and the unadorned but powerful messages in his acceptance speech won him ebullient applause and a standing ovation.

While Francesco was in great demand at the convention, we caught up with him in the hallway during breaks, inside a minibus en route to a Rotary event and at his makeshift office to find out more about the new president. Read on for the key takeaways.

He has two daughters – and two grandchildren with familiar names.

The elder one, who’s three years old, has my name: Francesco. The younger one is a year old, and she has my wife’s name. I love playing with them in my living room. They are so happy with me that they won’t let go of me when I leave.

While I feel sad about not being able to stay with them, I have to make a choice. I either have to refuse to be president or I must part with them temporarily. It is only for one year. I’m willing to make a small sacrifice. Rotary faced an emergency and I’m ready to step up. I’m very lucky to have the opportunity.

Orthodontics is about more than teeth.

I’ve been a practising orthodontist for 46 years now. I work mainly with young people, and it’s very important to try to understand them before beginning treatment. If you don’t understand them, it’s impossible to treat them – you have to win their cooperation. Forging those relationships is one of the best aspects of my job. Sometimes I know things about them that their parents don’t. A relationship so deep is the beginning of a good treatment.

His family has produced olive oil for more than a century.

I am the last of a long line of olive producers, I fear, because my daughters are not interested in this field. A good olive oil has to be spicy, and it has to be bitter. It has to have great chemical qualities – the acidity must be very low, lower than one per cent. To do this, you have to collect the olives very early. That means you have a small quantity but high quality. The olives in the oils you find at the supermarket are collected very late, which results in a huge quantity but a very low quality. To produce good olive oil, it is a question of passion.

He wasn’t keen on becoming his club’s president.

When my club first proposed that I become president, I didn’t want to accept. I had a stutter, so I was terrified of speaking to my club. But it wasn’t so bad. Then they invited me to be a district governor, and again, I didn’t want to accept. But once more, they convinced me.

Rotary has changed me. If the young professional who was afraid to speak to his club because of the risk of making a fool of himself can now get up on a stage and speak, in a language which is not his own, to an audience of thousands, well, I owe it all to all the Rotarians I have met in my life and who have always supported me and surrounded me with their affection.

But he thinks club presidents are key.

We have to improve our communication with club presidents, because they’re on the front lines of dealing with members. While we do a wonderful job of instructing district governors in the importance of membership, district governors in many cases speak with a club president only two or three times a year. So, there are too many club presidents who don’t have any idea why our membership goals are so important.

One of his top priorities is peacebuilding.

When I was a district governor, I organised a Rotary Youth Leadership Awards event for districts bordering the Mediterranean Sea: Italy, France, Spain, North Africa, Greece and Turkey. The challenge was bringing together Turkish and Italian young people, because they looked at one another as very different. The first day was tense; it was clear that they didn’t feel comfortable with each other. But after a few days, they began to discover that they had the same interests and the same dreams.

When the last day came, they sang John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ together and performed a skit they’d written about the cultural differences between their countries. It was one of the most beautiful things I can remember.

I think we can create a two-year plan that will be really effective. Rotary isn’t a scooter that can change direction quickly. It’s like a big cruise ship: If you want to make a turn, you have to begin many kilometres in advance.”

If you think about how many young people we send around the world through Rotary Youth Exchange, through scholarships and through Rotary Peace Centres, it’s like a peace machine. We need a peace machine at this moment, when the world seems to be moving away from peace.

He’s been listening to opera since he was young.

It was normal to hear opera in my family’s home. But Ragusa is a small town, and there was no lyric theatre there. When I went to university in Padua, there was the theatre nearby in Venice and I began to go. It was really very beautiful. A composer I like a lot is Vincenzo Bellini. He was born in Sicily; he’s from Catania. He died very, very young. He only did a few operas, but they are all very high quality. Norma, for example, is wonderful. So is The Capulets and the Montagues. And of course, there are many other great composers – Puccini, Verdi, Mozart.
It’s hard to pick one.

He has plans for overcoming his late start.

Usually, the president has a year to study problems, a second year to create a plan and a third year, while serving as president, to act. I’m very conscious that I’m beginning very late. I hope to work closely with the new RI President-elect, who will be appointed shortly. I think we can create a two-year plan that will be really effective. Rotary isn’t a scooter that can change direction quickly. It’s like a big cruise ship: If you want to make a turn, you have to begin many kilometres in advance.

He thinks Rotary is an action verb.

When I speak to Rotarians, I always tell them to change the verbs they use. You don’t “go to” Rotary like you go to the cinema, where you sit and watch other people doing something. Rotary is something you do. You have to participate. And then you begin to grow.