FRANCIS, A POPE OF THE POOR? A POPE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT? OR A POPE OF THE GLOBAL ELITE? Part VI
Published: June 6, 2022
by Matt Smyth, Professor at Strasbourg University – Religious Studies
The pope of the 4th Industrial Revolution and transhumanism
With whom should we reflect on this future ‘post-Covid society and world’? Well, for instance, with the Roman NPO humanity2-0.org, ‘developed’ by Father Philip Larrey.
“Developed in collaboration with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development at the Holy See and a consortium of leaders and luminaries, Humanity 2.0 seeks to unite humanity in the common cause of realizing a better world for our children”. And since “Humanity 2.0 is a vehicle for facilitating collaborative ventures between the traditionally siloed public, private and faith-based sectors”, CEOs such as those of CISCO, Virgin or Publicis, have joined in to bless this partnership with their corporate power. No reference to Christianity on its website, watched by a figure of the Goddess Athena, but a brief quote from Thomas Aquinas.
Its chairman, Father Larrey, is a priest and the dean of Faculty of Philosophy at the pontifical Latran University, but also an apostle of the 4th Industrial Revolution (actoninstitute.it), dear to the heart of Klaus Schwab. He is the author of Artificial Humanity, a book where he displays his faith in future Artificial Intelligence—as an entity endowed with real intelligence—, but hopes that it remains human.
Francis, while proclaiming his faith in what he believes to be tomorrow’s technology and AI in particular, seems to be quoting father Larrey almost ad verbatim, adding only his own personal communitarian tone. In a short videoclip, the pope invites Christians to “pray for a ‘human’ AI”. Because “robotics can make a better world possible if it is joined to the common good. […] Let us pray that the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence may always serve humankind. We could say: may it ‘be human’”. At a Davos Summit, but in the context of growing unemployment due to automation, he declared that “Artificial intelligence, robotics and other technological innovations must be so employed that they contribute to the service of humanity and to the protection of our common home, rather than to the contrary” (Davos Forum 2018). We are not very far from the transhumanist creed advocated by its mainstream media spokespersons such as Yuval Noah Harari. AI might actually be dangerous, however for the plebs to be protected from its potential evils, we need the technocratic elite to be in charge…
Transhumanist ideology, notably its belief in the future advent of a Great Biodigital Convergence, is a key point of the 4th Industrial Revolution preached by the WEF. The human and the machine will have to merge through data-mining, with the help of genome editing and digital implants, so that we can give birth to an ‘augmented human.’ The barrier between random biological entities and programmable digital technologies will be removed. The very idea of life as well as that of freedom are obsolete: life and notably the human soul are but extremely complex algorithms drawn from chemical and electromagnetic reactions. He who will master the data of these algorithms will thus be able to ‘hack’ human beings, as Yuval Noah Harari puts it, in a speech delivered to his Davos masters in 2018. Furthermore, even the transhumanistic hope in an eternal life, fulfilled either through cellular ageing prevention or through “Whole Brain Emulation”, is starting to attract large investments from big companies. But, even with a lot of imagination, it seems rather difficult to reconcile these dreams with the teaching of Francis’ predecessors.
This didn’t stop Father Larrey chairing two meetings given in Rome at the Teutonic College, along with Carlos Moreira and David Ferguson, under the patronage of a mysterious Elite Global Leaders Conference. Both Moreira and Ferguson are famous for being advocates of transhumanism, for having co-authored the Transhuman Code, and having created the oiste Think