Thiel's secretive Rome conference draws Church attention

[highplainsdem]

Last edited Sun Mar 15, 2026, 12:39 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: Reuters

Peter Thiel, the U.S. billionaire venture capitalist and early supporter of President Donald ​Trump, launched on Sunday a series of closed-door lectures in Rome exploring the concept of the ‌Antichrist, drawing scrutiny from Catholic commentators.

The invitation-only conference, which runs until Wednesday, is not open to the press and its venue has not been publicly disclosed. Organisers quoted in the media say participants are drawn from academia, technology and religious circles.

-snip-

Father Paolo Benanti, who advises the pope on artificial intelligence, wrote in an essay published on Saturday that Thiel operated as a "political theologian" within Silicon Valley.

"Thiel's entire action can... be read as a prolonged act of heresy against the liberal consensus: a challenge to ​the very foundations of civil ​coexistence, which he now ⁠considers outdated," Benanti wrote on Le Grand Continent website.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/thiels-secretive-rome-conference-draws-church-attention-2026-03-15/

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Benanti's essay is titled "American heresy: should Peter Thiel be burned at the stake?"

Which is a clickbait headline, but the analysis of Thiel's worldview is serious.

Original essay:

https://legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2026/03/14/thiel-heresie-benanti/

From the Google translation:

Before delving into Peter Thiel's ideological framework, it is essential to restore the term "heresy" to its original meaning, freeing it from its common understanding of blasphemy or mere doctrinal error, and thus restoring the dignity of its Greek etymology. Hairesis originally signifies a "choice," an option—the act of grasping a part by distinguishing it from the rest. In its deepest philosophical sense, heresy is therefore not the negation of truth, but the isolation of a partial truth, detached from the relational fabric of the whole and elevated to the status of an absolute principle. It is the absolutization of a fragment separated from the harmony of the whole: a particular intuition about human nature or social dynamics which, deprived of the necessary checks and balances imposed by the complexity of reality, becomes all-encompassing—and, ultimately, tyrannical.

It is from this angle that we must read Thiel's vision: not as a simple rejection of Western values ​​but as the pathological radicalization of some of their components — competition, technology, the individual — which, erected as the sole compass, lead to results that are radically divergent from the common democratic project.

-snip-

A neo-medieval future is emerging in which democratic politics is nothing more than a vestige and where all essential services for life in society — including security — are privatized and administered by corporate entities.

In this universe appears a new aristocracy of "sovereign individuals": a cognitive elite detached from geography, operating in a cyberspace free from jurisdictions, leaving behind a mass of individuals who have become superfluous.

Benanti points out that when that happens, democracy is dead, and what's left is " the clinical management of its corpse."


More on Thiel's lectures, from the Associated Press:

Thiel brings his Antichrist lectures to the Vatican’s doorstep, and Catholic institutions back away
https://apnews.com/article/italy-peter-thiel-paypal-pope-vatican-c3a6c7d2daba501caf8152558ac2d743

The invitation-only conference in Rome, from Sunday to Wednesday, has proven so controversial that the Catholic universities initially associated with it have all denied official involvement.

-snip-

Initially, the lectures were reportedly going to be held the Pontifical St. Thomas Aquinas University, the Dominican university in Rome known colloquially as the Angelicum. It is best known these days as the place where a young priest named Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, wrote his canon law doctoral thesis.

But the Anglicum backed away.

According to an announcement for the event seen by The Associated Press, the lectures were “jointly organized” by an Italian organization, the Vincenzo Gioberti Cultural Association, and the Cluny Institute at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

-snip-

“The Catholic University of America is not sponsoring or hosting an event featuring Peter Thiel this month in Rome,” a university spokesperson told AP. “The Cluny Project is an independent initiative incubated at the university.”

Thread from January of last year on Thiel's crazy religious ideas:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219919577

[dweller]

1. exploring the concept of the ‌Antichrist

Another pro-Pisswig rally i see …

😐


✌🏻

[Justice matters.]

10. All they have to do is to look at the orange $atan

he supported and still supports (to take his place or prop up vance if this world survives krasnov).

[paleotn]

2. Thiel better not discount the French Revolution.

One of many times this has happened. A point where the masses collectively discover the elites suck, can't kill all of the masses, and elite heads end up on pikes. It's a thing.

[Midnight Writer]

3. Either the people break the billionaires, or the billionaires will break all of us.

A single lunatic with hundreds of billions of dollars can destroy America. Maybe the world.

No one should have that kind of power.

[wcmagumba]

4. Sounds like an Opus Dei freakazoid meetup or something...

[Prairie Gates]

5. Excommunicate him

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. He is apparently Evangelical Protestant

https://www.reuters.com/technology/thiels-secretive-rome-conference-draws-church-attention-2026-03-15/
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/theologicalapologetics/2026/01/peter-thiel-and-antichrist-lectures-on-the-end-of-the-world/

which means he gets to pick a pastor who suits his personal feelings.

[Prairie Gates]

19. Oh, I thought Thiel was one of the kooky American Conservative Catholics, like Vance

I mean, the conservative Catholics in the US are actually Protestants, a version of American Anglican, but they pretend to be Catholic.

[Roy Rolling]

6. By their own logic

Isn’t Thiel doing what the legendary Antichrist himself would do?

[BlueKota]

8. I think so.

The New Testament contains warnings about false prophets who would come. These people would claim to be followers of Christ, but actually were doing it for their own personal glory, and not to honor Christ!

[highplainsdem]

17. I think so. But he's saying it's Greta Thunberg.

[BlueKota]

7. Thiel and his buddy tsf,

and their followers are the anti-
Christ's in my opinion. I am scared they will try and harm Pope Leo!

[Mister Ed]

9. If there really is an Antichrist, Donald Trump is probably it.

He fits the description in many ways.

[ultralite001]

11. One of the hottest tickets in the Vatican's backyard these days...

A four-lecture series on the Antichrist being given by Silicon Valley tech billionaire Peter Thiel.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/peter-thiel-brings-his-lectures-on-the-antichrist-to-the-vaticans-doorstep

From the San Jose Mercury-News...

https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/03/13/thiel-brings-his-antichrist-lectures-to-the-vaticans-doorstep-and-catholic-institutions-back-away/

[ultralite001]

13. A fascinating read: "Peter Thiel, Stephen Miller, and the Antichrist Walk into a Bar

in Minneapolis — Part 1...

https://futureforwarded.substack.com/p/peter-thiel-stephen-miller-and-the

+ Part 2...

https://substack.com/@futureforwarded/p-190791893

[snot]

14. Lots of info re- the actual content of the lectures

at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist .

I have to say, I'm as worried as he is about being pushed toward a one-world government, if it's at the expense of individual rights, which seems to be the agenda among many elites.

But there's a big difference between a healthy, democratic government that functions to protect individual rights and a government that rides rough-shod over free speech, privacy, due process, and other fundamental rights.

What Thiel wants is total freedom for sociopathic oligarchs, without any limits imposed by any truly democratic government or agency, international or otherwise and without concern for how the rest of us are harmed.

[Jilly_in_VA]

15. If I said what I think should be done to Peter Thiel

I'd probably be banned, so I won''t. But y'all can probably figure it out anyway. It might involve a rope.

[pat_k]

16. My first thought: Good God!

Weird from an atheist-- but Theil is a powerful, deranged, and scary force. To him, environmental regulation, AI regulation, pretty much any regulation represents forces of the anti-christ as we head toward some anti-tech apocalypse.

If that doesn't represent the delusions of a mentally ill person, I don't know what would.

[eppur_se_muova]

18. Just another lunatic "Libertarian", who thinks he should be able to do whatever the Hell he wants to do, regardless ...

... of who gets hurt by it, and thinks that's some kind of high-minded principle. It isn't. It's selfishness, in its purest and most malignant form. People need to stop treating him like he's some kind of inspirational "out-of-the-box" innovator. There's nothing inspiring or innovative about being a selfish asshole, no matter what kind of rhetoric you try to camouflage it with. He's out of morals, out of empathy, and out of principles, and those are not good boxes to be out of.

No more public microphones for him without a course of serious therapy first.

(Do these guys go crazy and then get rich, or is it the other way around ? I'm betting on the latter. I'm betting that the real point when a billionaire goes over-the-top, Looney Tunes crazy, is when he starts to believe he deserves a billion dollars. )