In Rome, under frescoed ceilings, executives from Google, Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic sat not with regulators, but with priests. They had come to the Vatican’s Conference on Artificial Intelligence in June. To most, it looked like optics. But after 15 years of working at the intersection of security, health and development, I saw something else: Even the architects of our future were looking for meaning.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, when some public health systems collapsed, it was not algorithms that saved us. In Michigan, mosque parking lots became drive-through vaccination sites. In rural Alabama, a Baptist church hung a sign that read: “Free Testing, All Welcome.” Faith leaders from Nigeria to South Dakota helped overcome vaccine hesitancy where government messaging failed (or was deliberately obscured). These acts weren’t stopgaps; they reveal something deeper about how humans navigate crisis and uncertainty.
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