Some time ago I wrote the announcement of the Catholic Digital Commons Foundation for the Open Source Catholic community. On the Foundation’s own website, I also explained why Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas matters so much for its mission. I wrote those pieces for a community and on behalf of an institution. Here, on my own site, I want to tell the same story the way I lived it. I am a priest who writes code on the side. For years I carried a question I could not answer alone. Then, over a single remarkable year, I watched the answer take shape, one encounter at a time.
Projects born of ministry
Neither of my main projects began as a “tech project”. The BibleGet API grew out of a very pastoral need. I wanted to make it simple to bring the text of Sacred Scripture into documents, presentations and websites. It works across languages and translations, without any copying and pasting. The Liturgical Calendar API answers an equally concrete need. It computes the liturgical calendar of the Roman Rite, both universal and particular, accurately and openly. That way, anyone building an app, a website, or a parish tool can rely on the same data.
Over the years both projects grew. So did the number of people and applications relying on them. With that growth came a question that kept coming back to me: what happens to all of this when I can no longer look after it? Projects like these survive on the goodwill and free time of a single person. They depend on one person’s calendar, one person’s health, one person’s server. However, that is not a sound foundation for something the Church’s people now depend on.
“You should set up an organization”
Months before the conclave of 2025, Fr. Charbel Bteich put words to what I had only vaguely sensed. He encouraged me to stop thinking of these projects as personal efforts. Instead, I should set up an organization that could support them properly. Such an entity could give them continuity and receive support. It could also welcome contributors and dialogue with the Church’s institutions.
His encouragement gave the idea fresh impetus. I began drafting a proposal for a foundation. Giovanni Silvestri, at the IT Office of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, reviewed it along the way. In the end, I sent it to Pope Francis. At that point it was still mostly an idea on paper. Going from an idea to a reality takes people, and I did not yet know who they would be.
Saint Peter’s Square, May 8, 2025
On May 8, 2025 I stood in Saint Peter’s Square, among a crowd with eyes fixed on the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. The white smoke rose, and soon we heard the name of the new Pope, Leo XIV. That same day, in the Square, I met Tim Connors. We talked about what each of us was doing. I told him about BibleGet, the Liturgical Calendar API, and the idea of a foundation. Tim knew people who were already building up a community of Catholic developers. So he offered to put me in touch with them.
True to his word, Tim introduced me to Taylor Black and Fr. Josh McCarty. From our very first conversations, Taylor and I found that we shared the same conviction. The Church needs shared, open, well-governed digital infrastructure. Moreover, the many Catholic developers who already serve her quietly, often in isolation, deserve a common home. A small team began to meet regularly to sketch what a Catholic open source foundation might look like. Over time others joined those conversations. Among them were Jeff Geerling and Mike Kasberg from Open Source Catholic, Matthew Sanders of Longbeard, and Andrew DeBerry.
I could not help noticing the timing. Two days after his election, Pope Leo XIV spoke to the College of Cardinals. He explained that he chose his name in reference to Leo XIII. With Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII had answered the social question of the first industrial revolution. Today, the new Pope said, the Church must respond to another industrial revolution: that of artificial intelligence. Think of it: an idea I had carried for months, the encouragement of Fr. Charbel, a chance meeting in the Square, and the first words of a new pontificate. Everything was starting to come together.
The Builders AI Forum
In November 2025, Taylor and I presented the idea at the Builders AI Forum. The forum took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. It gathered Catholic builders, entrepreneurs, technologists and scholars to reflect together on artificial intelligence in light of the faith. The participants responded so warmly and so concretely that we knew the time for conversations was over. It was time to incorporate. Eugenio Zucal came forward to join the effort and the initial Board of Directors. Meanwhile, JM Boyd put us in touch with Daniel Hennessy, a Catholic lawyer in Texas. Daniel generously took care of the legal filing. Within weeks we had an Ecclesial and a Technical Advisory Council, a website, a LinkedIn profile and a manifesto. Everything started coming together very quickly, and a wonderful community began to form.
January 21, 2026
On January 21, 2026, the Catholic Digital Commons Foundation came into being as a nonprofit corporation, with an initial board of directors. A certificate of formation may seem like a dry document. For me, though, it marked the moment when my long-standing question finally had an answer. Projects like BibleGet and the Liturgical Calendar API now have a legal home. They have a governance framework and peer review. Above all, they can now outlive the enthusiasm, and the energy, of their original author.
And they are no longer alone. The Foundation is a home for the work of many Catholic developers. It is also a bridge between them and the Church’s own institutions. After all, those institutions carry the responsibility for much of the data we work with.
A confirmation: Magnifica Humanitas
On May 15, 2026, Pope Leo XIV signed his first encyclical. The date fell exactly 135 years after Rerum Novarum. Its title is Magnifica Humanitas, on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. As I read it, I had a strong impression. Paragraph after paragraph, the Successor of Peter seemed to describe why our Foundation needed to exist. And he did so months after we had started.
The Holy Father opens with a choice. Humanity must decide whether “to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together” (MH §1). Against the uniformity of Babel, he sets the image of Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem. There, the work happens “not through the initiative of one man, but through the shared responsibility of all” (MH §8). When I read those words, I thought immediately of my own story. For years I had tried to carry these projects on my own. What changed everything was the discovery that this was never meant to be the initiative of one man.
The encyclical goes further. It extends the universal destination of goods to “new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure and data” (MH §67). It also re-reads the principle of subsidiarity for our world, where the great technological platforms set the conditions of access to public life (MH §71). An open commons, shared and transparently governed, can serve dioceses, parishes and religious institutes. Therefore it is not merely a technical preference. It is a concrete way of living out the Church’s social teaching in the digital age. I explore this at greater length in “Rebuilding the City, not the Tower” on the Foundation’s blog.
Looking back
Looking back over that year, I see a clear path. It runs from a brother priest’s encouragement to a conversation in a crowded Saint Peter’s Square. Then it leads to a forum at the Gregorian and a filing in Texas. I cannot read all this as a mere series of coincidences. Nobody planned it, and nobody could have done it alone. Each step depended on someone else. Fr. Charbel pushed me to act. Tim made the introductions. Taylor and Fr. Josh shared the vision from the start. Many others joined the conversations, reviewed drafts, and lent their time and expertise. I am deeply grateful to each of them.
The Holy Father invites us not to be afraid “to get our hands dirty on the ‘construction site’ of our time” (MH §16). Perhaps you are a developer who loves the Church. Perhaps you have a project in a personal repository that could serve others. Or perhaps you simply want to help. In any case, the construction site is open. You can find the Foundation, its manifesto and its projects at catholicdigitalcommons.org. We are rebuilding the city together, and there is a section of the wall for each of us.
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