As Google, Meta, and Apple secretly tweak search and advertising algorithms into billion dollar fines, antitrust lawsuits and monopolies, Pope Francis, 88, “returned to the home of the Father” on 21 April 2025, according to the Vatican. After reshuffling 80% of the conclave, a new pontiff will be chosen in coming weeks, and join the brothers in Silicon Valley in an internecine war between science and religion with radically different views of the New Way.

A combative defender of liberal democratic values, Pope Francis’ legacy marked progressive ‘processes’ including: authorizing blessings for same-sex couples (Fiducia Supplicans); upending canon law by unleashing women into the ministries (Spiritus Domini); and apologizing for the church’s role in the genocide of Canadian Indigenous peoples (Canada’s Indian Residential School System). As sovereign of the Vatican City State with diplomatic missions in 183 countries, Francis joined world leaders condemning Israel's military operations in Gaza. However, as to the migrants fleeing conflicts, poverty, and climate disasters worldwide he spoke ex cathedra with the express authority of the Holy Father.

In February, U.S. Vice President JD Vance (a Catholic) defended the second Trump administration’s mass deportations and cuts to international aid by citing the Catholic’s Ordo Amoris (the right ordering of one’s love) to justify nativism. Francis replied with an excoriating response to US bishops.

The true Ordo Amoris is the love that builds a fraternity open to all—without exception. Focusing solely on family, community or national identity introduces an ideological criterion that both distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest. Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.

Enter Big Tech. In 2025, the world’s estimated 8.2 billion people owned more phones than the global population combined, according to the World Economic Forum. Perhaps you’ve heard the EU’s Digital Markets Act warming up this week, slapping Meta and Apple with $800 million in antitrust fines? Or maybe the US Justice Department’s prelude of major antitrust lawsuits? Google has already lost 2 for abusing their monopoly in the search and online advertising space. Anticipate a federal judge to order the break up of Google come August.

While Francis did more during his tenure than any pope to push the Holy See to adapt modern financial practices, and no longer operate in the shadows, his successor will need to spelunker further into the ether for revelations of truth and light.

A few terms. In technology, a Tech Agnostic (or data agnostic) is when data is able to transcend prompts, protocols, and algorithmic programs. Like a Crusader—who campaigns vigorously for political, social, or religious change—the Tech Agnostic is agile and ready to respond to market fluctuations, trade tariffs, foreign investors selling their US treasuries, or even a looming historic storm on Wall Street. That’s because the Agnostic is flexible and open-minded to different approaches, and can transcend any one program, language, platform or framework. Emancipated from proprietary technology and programming languages, the Agnostic enables the user to become decidedly free to exercise their agency in the cybersphere.

Devices that manipulate data are called ‘protocols.’ For example, Apple has 1.96 million apps in their App Store. There are 2.87 million in the Google Play Store. All apps are required to be downloaded in store, and therefore come under the control of their “terms and conditions” of which the user is generally unawares. A deep state of coding infrastructure within Apple, Meta, Google, and Microsoft and approximately 70,000 AI-related tech companies worldwide now control what their users see and often buy and believe.

Since were in Rome an anecdote. The Five Good Emperors who oversaw Pax Romana presaged the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. Tinkering with monetary policy to raise revenue, they debased the silver denarius; imposed tariffs of 25 percent; triggered inflation, and caused resentment among their public and trading partners along the Silk Road. The last emperor of the Pax Romana Marcus Aurelius observes in “Meditations:"

Everything we hear in an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. The people’s perception of events, not the events themselves, are controlling the people’s state of mind.

If technology is the world’s most powerful religion is it worthy of our faith? While governments are doing their bit to control the space, only technology’s beholden users can provide the saving grace. Take the International Monetary Fund. On Tuesday, the IMF slashed its forecast for global economic growth this year to 2.8 percent; On Wednesday, Trump replied via post “I’ll slash import taxes by more than half soon;” and come Thursday the stock markets collectively got a boost.

Trump’s first 100 days in office officially ends next week. Somewhere beyond the 12 states now suing the Trump administration’s tariff policies, or Judge Hannah Dugan sitting in detention, its with a sigh of relief we report that Trump's meme coin, which had fizzled in value, is surging now that it includes an “intimate dinner with the president.” If faintly, we hear the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther calling from the annuls of history, “Peace when possible, but at all costs truth.”

Unless or until the world’s 5.56 billion internet users et. al. twig on to the notion that Big Tech’s sole business model is to surveil, track, predict, tweak and proffer their users to the highest bidder this prophecy will never come to bear.

On 13 March 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis. The first Jesuit pope; the first from Latin America; and the first from the Southern Hemisphere. He lied in state at St. Peter's Basilica while a choir sang, and cardinals chanted the Litany of the Saints for the repose of his soul. Francis was interred, according to his wishes, in a simple underground tomb at St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome.

His successor will preside over 1.4 million Roman Catholics dwindling across Europe and the Americas, whilst at the same time surging across Asia and Africa. Cardinal Luis Tagle of the Philippines, and Cardinal Peter Turkson from Ghana, are contenders, both of whom followed and even Liked Francis’ first Tweet just days after his first Angelus prayer and election as Pope. "Dear friends: I thank you from my heart and I ask you to continue to pray for me,” but it was those which followed @Pontifex which quietly cobbled together Francis’ canonical legacy of flexibility, tolerance, and compassion.

”It is not enough to be passersby on the digital highways. The digital world can be an environment rich in humanity, a network not of wires but of people.” May taming the protocols with higher purpose make Pope Francis' process prophetically true.