LUCE is a prominent cryptocurrency player with a strong Vatican background. The token is related to the Vatican background with the official mascot tag for the year 2025. The token is the first of its kind to associate with a strong religious background. The association of the token with Catholicism has made it culturally and [...]

Vatican a lansat o serie de servicii noi bazate pe inteligență artificială pentru Bazilica Sf. Petru, permițând acces virtual la comorile arhitecturale din perioada Renașterii și tururi îmbunătățite pentru vizitatori – zilnic aproximativ 40.000-50.000 de oameni. Noile experiențe au fost prezentate în pregătirea pentru Anul Sfânt sau Jubileul Bisericii Catolice din 2025, care are loc ...

The post Servicii AI pentru Bazilica Sf. Petru lansate de Vatican înainte de anul jubiliar appeared first on Forbes Romania.

THE VATICAN TAKES A TOUGHER STANCE ON SAME-SEX MARRIAGE.

An Italian girl receives a vision of Jericho that guides her to speak with a woman on Transform 2013 outreach day.

Le pape François a reconnu que « le Vatican savait ». Cette révélation suscite des questions : que savait-il et depuis quand ? L’Église, les médias et Emmaüs semblent avoir fermé les yeux sur la vérité. Face aux souffrances des victimes, l'Église doit maintenant agir, les soutenir activement, ou trahir ses propres fondations morales.

cna

The Vatican and Microsoft on Monday unveiled a digital twin of St. Peter's Basilica that uses artificial intelligence to explore one of the world's most important monument's while helping the Holy See manage visitor flows and identify conservation problems.

The Raphael Rooms in the Vatican are universally known as one of the greatest works of art ever created. During a typical summer, temperatures in Rome can soar as high as 104°F. So the decision to install air conditioning in the Raphael Rooms for the first time ever was an easy one.

The Vatican and Microsoft on Monday unveiled a digital twin of St. Peter’s Basilica that uses artificial intelligence to explore one of the world’s most important monument’s while helping the Holy See manage visitor flows and identify conservation problems.

Using 400,000 high-resolution digital photographs, taken with drones, cameras and lasers over four weeks when no one was in the basilica, the digital replica is going online alongside two new on-site exhibits to provide visitors—real and virtual—with an interactive experience.

“It is literally one of the most technologically advanced and sophisticated projects of its kind that has ever been pursued,” Microsoft’s president Brad Smith told a Vatican press conference.

The project has been launched ahead of the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee, a holy year in which more than 30 million pilgrims are expected to pass through the basilica’s Holy Door, on top of the 50,000 who visit on a normal day.

“Everyone, really everyone should feel welcome in this great house,” Pope Francis told Smith and members of the project’s development teams at an audience Monday.

The digital platform allows visitors to reserve entry times to the basilica, a novelty for one of the world’s most visited monuments that regularly has an hours-long line of tourists waiting to get in.

But the heart of the project is the creation of a digital twin of St. Peter’s Basilica through advanced photogrammetry and artificial intelligence that allows anyone to “visit” the church and learn about its history.

The ultra-precise 3D replica, developed in collaboration with digital preservation company Iconem, incorporates 22 petabytes of data—enough to fill five million DVDs—Smith said.

The images have already identified structural damage and signs of deterioration, such as missing mosaic pieces, cracks and fissures invisible to the naked eye, with a speed and precision far beyond human capabilities.

Francis has called for the ethical use of AI and used his annual World Message of Peace this year to urge an international treaty to regulate it, arguing that technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness were too great.

On Monday, he thanked the Microsoft team and basilica workers responsible for the project and marveled at how modern technology was helping spread an ancient faith and preserve a piece of world patrimony, which celebrates the 400th anniversary of its consecration in 2026.

“This house of prayer for all peoples has been entrusted to us by those who have preceded us in faith and apostolic ministry,” he told Smith and the delegation. “Therefore, it is a gift and a task to care for it, in both a spiritual and material sense, even through the latest technologies.”

Smith declined to give a price tag for Microsoft’s investment in the project, saying only it was “substantial” and was borne of Francis’ initiative in 2018 to bring tech companies together to promote ethnically minded AI.

He said Microsoft had done similar AI projects at Mont Saint-Michel in France and Ancient Olympia, in Greece.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

—Nicole Winfield, Associated Press

Vatican and Microsoft partner to showcase St. Peter’s Basilica through AI technology  National Catholic Reporter

WikiLeaks: 2010-02-02: 10VATICAN18: Vatican Official On Iraq and Planned Meetings of Middle East Bishops

WikiLeaks: 2010-02-08: 10VATICAN23: Vatican: Iran is not Respecting Human Rights

WikiLeaks: 2010-02-12: 10VATICAN26: Iraqi Ambassador to the Holy See Critical of USG Iraq Policies

Albania's Prime Minister wants to give a state and nationhood -- similar to the Vatican in Italy -- to a Muslim minority within the country.

Experts added a carbon fiber pole to help anchor the "Apollo Belvedere," which had developed cracks along the legs and knees. Now, the looming Roman sculpture is finally back on display

A Vatican official arranged the encounter in Sheba, where he met with civilians and soldiers injured in the ongoing conflict, including Alon Kaminer, an Israeli soldier.

An Italian girl receives a vision of Jericho that guides her to speak with a woman on Transform 2013 outreach day.

Pope Francis' cows play a key role in a centuries-old restoration technique used on Vatican City's Belvedere Palace.

With Italy facing severe drought conditions, the Vatican has turned off its iconic fountains for the first time in living memory to help save water.

John the apostle reports that Jesus' Words of Warning from Holy Week in 2019 came to pass during Lent in 2020 when COVID-19 desolated Vatican City.

ROME (AP) — A petition signed by some conservative Catholics claiming the coronavirus is an overhyped “pretext” to deprive the faithful of Mass and impose a new world order has run into a hitch. The highest-ranking signatory, Cardinal Robert Sarah, head of the Vatican’s liturgy office, claims he never signed the petition. But the archbishop […]

George Pell has been acquitted in the High Court and freed from jail for Easter. But will the cardinal return to a position of power in the global Catholic Church? And, a long-time friend of George Pell, Dr Bernadette Tobin joins the program. Also, the Palestinian Muslim who has spent his life as guardian of one of Christianity’s holiest shrines.

POPE BENEDICT is "making Francis' life a misery" as rumours of a major row between the two Vatican titans continue to boil, an expert has warned.

Key facts, figures and dates

Catholic Church -- Clergy -- Sexual behavior.

The Catholic Church's actions during World War II have long been a matter of historical debate

Vatican City, May 5, 2020 / 08:10 am (CNA).- The Vatican’s migrant and refugee office has released a booklet with guidance on how the Church might respond to the problem of people internally displaced within their own countries due to conflict or disaster.

Many people might be unaware of the existence of internally displaced people, or IDPs, Cardinal Michael Czerny, under-secretary of the migrants and refugees section, said May 5.

Speaking during a livestreamed press conference, he noted that internal displacement “is a current, contemporary reality in a surprising number of countries.”

Internally displaced persons are defined as those who have had to flee their home or residence due to violence, conflict, disaster, or development projects to find refuge in another part of the country. Since IDPs have not crossed international borders, they do not have the legal status of refugee or migrant and do not receive the legal protections those categories can give.

Czerny’s office, which is a part of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Development, published a booklet May 5 called “Pastoral Orientations on Internally Displaced People.”

The document is directed primarily at dioceses, parishes, Catholic NGOs, and other Catholic organizations. It has short paragraphs on key issues related to the welcome, protection, promotion, and integration of IDPs, interspersed with quotes from relevant Church documents and speeches by Pope Francis.

The importance of spiritual care for Catholics who are internally displaced in their countries is one of the topics addressed. Cardinal Czerny said Tuesday he would like to highlight the response an average Catholic parish might give when it “discovers IDPs in its midst and learns how to reach out to them.”

“To me, this is a great sign of hope,” he said.

“When the Holy Father asks us to go to the peripheries, we might think of going to a faraway foreign land where we will do exotic things,” the cardinal said. “But the real peripheries which hurt are the ones that are very near at hand, the ones where people among us are invisible, are set aside, are discarded, are overlooked.”

According to data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), at the end of 2019, 45.7 million people were living internally displaced from their homes worldwide for reasons of conflict. Including other causes of displacement, the number of IDPs is more than 50 million.

The IDMC reported that the countries with the highest numbers of internally displaced people are Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Colombia, though nearly every country in the world has IDPs.

In the United States, the IDMC says there were 916,000 people newly displaced internally due to disaster in 2019. The majority of these new displacements were caused by Hurricane Dorian and the California wildfires.

The Church can do something so that “those among us who have been forced to flee and find themselves among us will receive Christian welcome and the response the Body of Christ wants to give them,” Czerny explained.

He said the aim of “Pastoral Orientations” is for the more than 50 million IDPs “to be recognized and supported, promoted and eventually reintegrated, so that they can play an active, constructive role in their country even if powerful causes, both natural and unjust human causes, have forced them to flee from home and take refuge somewhere.”

“In the post-COVID-19 world that is emerging, their contribution will be very much needed,” the cardinal added.

He explained that publishing the document on internal displacement is “not a lessening on the priority of refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking,” but a matter of “continuing to respond to the full range of people’s needs and vulnerabilities,” even in the midst of a global pandemic.

“There are very many needs which didn’t go away just because we were focused on other things in the past weeks,” he underlined. “It’s not a question of COVID-19 displacing priorities. It’s a question of both/and…”

Problems such as internal displacement were already there, “and, on top of it all we also have the challenge as a human family of resisting and overcoming this pandemic.”

The Church, he said, is able “to take on a new challenge without jettisoning other problems as if they suddenly became irrelevant.”

Reform continues under Pope Francis with South American summit tackling shortage of clergy

In a statement given on Wednesday, a Vatican spokesperson insisted comments published in La Repubblica by Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari were not a 'faithful account of what was actually said'.

Cardinal John Henry Newman is to be canonised at the Vatican in Rome tomorrow. Prince Charles will make speech and woman claiming miracle after praying to Cardinal will be there.

Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi (pictured) writes that the Vatican lost nearly €44million (£38million) last year while its property empire made a loss for the first time.

Pope Francis has renamed the once 'secret' archive to the Vatican Apostolic Archive. He is also opening the archive of World War II-era Pope Pius XII next year, eight years early.

The Vatican invested $4.5 million on films in 2019, one of which was the Elton John biopic Rocketman (bottom right) which features scenes of gay sex and drug abuse, a report has revealed.

Devout Catholic Susan Boyle joined Lionel Richie and Bonnie Tyler, 68, alongside other stars for an ensemble tonight at the annual Vatican Christmas Concert tonight at the Paul VI Audience Hall.

Vice President Mike Pence told Pope Francis on Friday that the pontiff made him a 'hero' for giving him a gift for his mom as Donald Trump prepares to address the March for Life rally.

The Palazzo Migliori was set to be turned into a luxury hotel after it became vacant last year and could have charged top rates with its prime location just off St Peter's Square.

Executives at Netflix must be regarding it as a small miracle. Their big-budget, exquisitely acted drama The Two Popes is up for two Oscars at this weekend's Academy Awards ceremony.

Chrissie Beales, then 24, was on a yearlong holiday with her husband in Vatican City when she decided to send her Catholic father a postcard in 1977.

Millions who were planning to head abroad this year to visit well known attractions, will still be able to do so from the comfort of their own home.

Homosexuals and transsexuals will never go to heaven, Javier Lozano Barragan, Cardinal from the Roman Catholic Church.He said that the Catholic Church still regards homosexuality as an insult to God. People were not born gay but in the

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019.

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.

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