Overview
- The invitation-only series ran this week at the Renaissance-era Palazzo Orsini Taverna near the Vatican with no media or recording devices permitted.
- Thiel’s thesis contends the Antichrist could emerge as a global governance system leveraging anxieties about AI, climate change or nuclear war.
- Prominent Jesuit theologian Father Antonio Spadaro warned the view recasts efforts to regulate AI as preparing for the Antichrist, and Catholic daily Avvenire called Thiel “an agent of chaos.”
- Organizers were identified as the Vincenzo Gioberti Cultural Association and the Cluny Institute, as the Angelicum denied hosting and the Catholic University of America said the Cluny Project operates independently.
- Protesters demonstrated outside Italy’s defense ministry with signs reading “Peter Thiel out of Rome,” and Thiel has not responded publicly to the criticism.