Peter Thiel provides lectures on “Antichrist and the Apocalypse” in Rome | EUROtoday

There can hardly be extra secrecy. Peter Thiel arrived in Rome on Saturday. The tech billionaire from Silicon Valley is giving 4 lectures on the subject of “Antichrist and the Apocalypse” till Tuesday. Thiel is accompanied by his personal safety guards. It just isn’t recognized the place he lived throughout his keep in Rome. The roughly 100 invited company from church and tradition, media and communication, science and politics will solely learn in regards to the occasion location on the day of the lectures. Strict Chatham House guidelines apply. Cell telephones have to be handed in, notes and even recordings are prohibited. There is speak of a confidentiality obligation with a nice of 10,000 euros.

Following the primary lecture, a mass was to happen on Sunday night within the Basilica of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, celebrated in line with the Tridentine Rite, in fact. Pope Francis had successfully banned the so-called Old Mass as a result of he noticed it as an instrument utilized by ultra-conservative Catholics to divide the common church and undermine his personal non secular and political authority. Leo

But how conservative is the brand new Pope Leo truly in comparison with his “left-wing” predecessor Francis? In any case, the Vatican wished nothing to do with Thiel’s occasions. Initially it was stated that the lectures would happen on the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the so-called Angelicum. But the rector of the college, the American theologian and Dominican priest Thomas Joseph White, dismissed this as a silly rumor in a press release: Thiel’s lecture collection was neither organized by the Pontifical University nor held on its premises.

Instead, the organizer of the lectures is the cultural affiliation “Vincenzo Gioberti”, which is younger in each respect – based in Brescia in 2023 and led by teachers from Generation Z. In a press release, the affiliation from Brescia stated that it doesn’t care about being branded as reactionaries and supporters of a long-gone ancien régime by the “masters of the stereotype and a supposed intelligentsia”. Instead, one takes severely one in every of Peter Thiel’s most controversial positions, in line with which “democracy and freedom are no longer compatible,” as a result of it brings to gentle a fact that many actors in public life in Italy and Europe expertise of their on a regular basis lives: ever bigger establishments which are solely formally democratically legitimized decide the life, actions and considering of their constituent parts. This have to be countered by an thought of ​​“radical subsidiarity as the basis of every political community”, which in flip relies on “Europe’s Christian identity as a prerequisite for the growth of its peoples”.

It might be no coincidence that Thiel is now stopping off in Rome along with his tour of lectures on “Antichrist and the Apocalypse” after he had beforehand introduced his concepts in San Francisco, Paris and Cambridge. Rome is the seat of the common church, that is the place Peter’s successor relies – at present and for the primary time an American. Leo XIV can be the primary pontiff from the Augustinian order. And for months he has been uncovered to a form of double assault from ultra-conservative Catholics within the USA with seemingly Augustinian arguments, which he’s strenuously attempting to refute.

And now Peter Thiel, the tech prophet, is talking on the Pope’s doorstep, so to talk. From Thiel’s standpoint, on the one hand, pseudo-democratic superstructures undermine the libertarian freedom of the person and of Christians. On the opposite hand, in line with Thiel, none apart from the Antichrist is talking out with apocalyptic warnings in regards to the supposedly catastrophic penalties of synthetic intelligence (AI) and different blessings of the high-tech age. It actually hasn’t gone unnoticed by Thiel that Pope Leo repeatedly warns in regards to the dangers of AI. We additionally strongly advise towards utilizing AI when writing sermons as a result of this results in the impoverishment of the thoughts and its organs: “All muscles die when we no longer use them. And that’s why the brain must also be used so that we don’t lose our intelligence.”