Massimo Faggioli

new right in America, the Vatican is still an important place on the chessboard.

Because there's nothing like that in terms of who can speak on behalf of Christianity.

More or less.

The new thing is that right now we have the first pope from the United States who knows that very well.

very well that world, is the first pope who was active on social media before becoming pope.

So he's personally familiar with that.

he's a member of religious order, the Augustinians, who have always thought hard about the connection between truth and the human person, how we know things, why it's important to love what we know and to know what we love.

So he's the right person from a theological point of view to address that.

But the Vatican will continue to be a goal

on the map because there's nothing like that.

And the Catholic Church in the United States now is the single largest church.

And there's no way politically, culturally around that to control America, the narrative about America, if you don't have some control on Catholicism, on their hierarchies, on their intellectuals.

Well, we have a fairly clear idea, especially since the start of 2026, when the Pope and this Vatican have become more outspoken on what they see coming from America in terms of the connection between technology and warfare and the manipulation of truth.

They have been

very direct in addressing some of those issues without naming names most of the time.

But yes, I think this is a very crucial time because what technology is doing affects, from a Catholic point of view, the very essence of being human.

our dimension of knowing, of feeling, of connecting with others.

And so in the Vatican, they have people who are working on this for a long time because the Vatican was contacted for the first time by Silicon Valley themselves in 2015, when Silicon Valley people came to Rome and told the Vatican,

we might not necessarily agree with you, but we want to know what you think about all this.

And so there's a connection between Silicon Valley and the Vatican.