Festivities and Friendship

Campus Life Update

This week, students spent the weekend literally running around Rome, with some exploring the city in search of hidden Masses, while others participated in a hackathon at the Pontifical Ukrainian College of St. Josaphat in Rome. The event was co-led by Taylor Black, the Director of Venture and AI ecosystems at Microsoft, and member of CatholicTech’s own Executive Committee. The gathering split into groups who used the late morning to early evening to put together AI powered projects to solve a problem of modern life. At the conference, where the majority of attendees were affiliates of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, the impressive range of possibilities for use-cases of AI were on full display. In a mere handful of hours, some groups presented their impressive projects: ontological ordering of theological texts in the data sets used by AI to give accurate weight to certain sources when arriving at  conclusions, chatbots that would facilitate the formation of smaller in-real-life groups around faith communities or schools, portals that have the potential to keep several different social media platforms and websites up-to-date with current information surrounding all sorts of events to facilitate communication to foster community building, ways of leveraging multiple different AI agents in tandem to leverage human time to produce greater impact in business or development processes. The conference culminated after lunch on the roof, where some lingered to connect on a more personal level.

Students also chanced upon a requiem mass celebrated just outside the Vatican walls. The experience was surreal, with whispered Latin prayers, grim and plain architecture (unconventional for Rome) and a bowed and silent congregation around the shrouded coffin of one of the faithful departed. Chiesa Dell’Immacolata dei Miracoli is a rare gem among the bright and glorious churches of Rome, being a simple, barren and rather shadowy chapel. The mass celebrated there according to the ancient rite in this sanctuary was profound and mystifying. On Sunday, students also celebrated the Feast of the dedication of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, one of the major basilicas of Rome that was first given to the Christians by Emperor Constantine after his conversion in battle, by visiting the holy site and acquiring the plenary indulgence associated with this pious act of pilgrimage.  

The long weekend was at the forefront of everyone’s mind this past week during school, despite the onslaught of midterms. Today is off this week in honor of the feast of Saint Albert the Great, one of the patron saints of CatholicTech, a great scientist in his own right.