Two meetings with Pope Francis to learn about closeness. And a conference to take it into the future
At Fondazione Mondo Digitale, we had the honour of meeting Pope Francis on two profound and transformative occasions. The first time was in 2023, at the Vatican with Assifero, where the Pontiff spoke to us about the challenge of closeness: knowing how to live on the margins, accompanying those in pain, supporting rebirth. The second time, in St. Peter's Square, in a special meeting with our families, we experienced together the power of bonds, of mutual care, of taking responsibility for one another.
These experiences continue to nourish our educational and social work, and today they find new strength in RomeCup 2025, the annual event that combines robotics, artificial intelligence and human values. This year's inaugural conference is inspired by the speech that Pope Francis addressed to the G7 leaders on 14 June 2024: a visionary intervention on artificial intelligence, which strongly recalls the ethical responsibility of our technological choices.
The Pontiff warned against the risks of delegating decisions that affect human dignity and life to machines, stating that ‘no machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being’ and reminding us that ‘we would condemn humanity to a future without hope if we took away people's ability to decide about themselves and their lives’. His appeal calls for the preservation of human freedom and for the moral responsibility not to be abdicated, even in the most advanced contexts of innovation.
In this spirit, we relaunch the educational challenge: to train young people capable of using technology to build bridges, support social justice and leave no one behind.
‘Farewell Pope Francis, your voice has been silenced, but not the light of your message of love, peace, justice and human dignity,’ writes Alfonso Molina on his LinkedIn profile.
Pope Francis taught us that inclusion is a concrete, daily, revolutionary act. And we continue to walk along this path.
