Hacking The Vatican: Silicon Valley Collaborates With The Church

Catholicism and cutting-edge technology have had a complicated relationship over the centuries. While monasteries were often hotbeds for scientific advancement and many theologians were also fascinated with the empirical sciences, in the past century the church has often seemed more wary of new technologies than supportive. 

But the current Pope Francis, known for his open-minded and forward-thinking philosophy, has been "courting Silicon Valley for years," report Sigal Samuel and Josephine McKenna for The Atlantic. They suggest this recent collaboration between tech industries and the Vatican is partly because both sectors have an “image problem”—the Vatican for being regressive and tech for being unethical. But are their core values really aligned enough for a crossover? 

In one recent collaborative experiment, the Vatican sponsored a hackathon called VHacks, which convened 120 students from around the world to develop technology for social good. Social good is the emphasis of all Vatican tech initiatives thus far. And (given the recent major leaks about what Facebook is doing with our data) prompting Silicon Valley to weigh ethical decisions more carefully might be the ultimate benefit of these endeavors. And from the Catholic side, Stefano Marzani, a Catholic Italian entrepreneur, says: “why should spirituality not be innovative?”