The Pope’s New Knights: Bringing Faith to the Tech Frontier – National Catholic Register

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As artificial intelligence algorithms increasingly shape people’s lives, businessman Artur Kluz is calling on lay Christian innovators to become guardians of humanity in the digital age.
How can a civilization increasingly relying on code and data remain truly human? 
From Silicon Valley to Brussels, observers may sense that technology is no longer just transforming tools but redefining Christian civilization and humanity, opening an unprecedented challenge for the Church.
In such context, Catholic entrepreneur Artur Kluz is calling for the creation of a new order of Christian innovators who would unite faith, reason and technical expertise to guide the Church in this digital age. 
A Washington, D.C.-based investor and founder of the Kluz Prize for PeaceTech, Kluz has spent years building bridges between innovation and ethics. Created in 2022, his prize honors founders, entrepreneurs and innovators who use technology to prevent conflict, foster peace, save lives and promote human dignity — offering a concrete expression of his conviction that innovation should serve humanity rather than divide it. 
Kluz envisions a new kind of knighthood: a trusted circle of Christian entrepreneurs, men and women, who would stand as moral sentinels at the frontier of technology, advising the pope and defending human dignity. The knights and dames, he said, would be chosen not for wealth or influence but for expertise, character and wisdom. 
“Their rule would place virtue ahead of fame and moral character ahead of social-media followers,” Kluz told the Register on the sidelines of the Builders AI Forum, hosted by the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Nov. 6-7. “Better a few solid knights than millions.”
Kluz’ vision may seem bold, but it follows a long tradition of spiritual renewal in times of crisis. He sees the present moment as a continuation of the Church’s long tradition of creative response to cultural upheaval — and as a potential turning point. 
“At every point in the Church’s history, new orders have arisen to meet secular challenges,” Kluz recalled. “The Benedictines saved Western Christendom after the fall of Rome, while the Dominicans and Jesuits confronted heresy and carried the Gospel to new continents. Today, the challenge is to ensure that the world of technology — driven by ambition and profit — does not destroy our humanity.”
The ancient orders of the Holy Sepulcher and of Malta, born in the era of the Crusades, once defended Christians in the Holy Land and safeguarded sacred sites. Kluz sees in them a model for the 21st century: an action-oriented faith, adapted to the needs of the time.
“Nowadays, tech founders are shaping the world more than presidents or army generals. They create the systems that will define how people live, think and even pray. If they are not guided by virtue, they risk building a civilization without a soul.”
Kluz noted that Pope Leo XIV — whose name deliberately echoes Leo XIII and his landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891) — has signaled his intention to offer the Church and the world a new moral compass for the technological age, addressing the ethical and spiritual challenges of artificial intelligence and biotechnology.
Asked how he would contribute to such a reflection, Kluz said he would urge the Holy Father to frame the coming encyclical around the “Space Revolution.” The conquest of space represents for him the most momentous shift of our time — a spiritual crossroads forcing humanity to reflect on the meaning of creation, its limits, and its destiny. 
“The extension of human life beyond Earth will have consequences far greater than AI or biotechnology,” he explained. “It will redefine how we understand creation, responsibility, and the human vocation itself.”
Kluz summarized his vision in four key themes: forming virtuous tech leaders; defending human dignity against transhumanist illusions; turning technology into a force for peace; and keeping the human person at the center of progress. Innovation, he argued, must be guided not by profit or power but by faith, reason and virtue working together so that technology serves life instead of dominating it.
Kluz moves easily from boardrooms and airports to the silence of monasteries. His professional environment stretches from Silicon Valley to New York and Brussels, but it is above all his missionary conviction that drives him. He noted that most of the entrepreneurs he meets are not explicitly Christian, but many are searching. 
“They feel the weight of shaping the future on their shoulders, even if they cannot yet name it in Christian terms,” he said. “If their moral imagination is formed, they could become true pillars of civilization.”
The transformation that is currently unfolding, according to him, is nothing less than a “St. Augustine moment.” 
As the Roman Empire was collapsing, he said, “Augustine forced society to ask itself the essential questions: Who is man? What is truth? What is time? Today, at the dawn of technological civilization, we face the same questions.”
In Kluz’s view, Augustine’s Confessions should be on every entrepreneur’s shelf. The book’s insistence on reflection before action, he believes, is precisely what the tech world lacks. “For an entrepreneur, the question is not just ‘Do I see what others do not?’ but also ‘What will I do with it?’ If he uses his insight to serve others, it becomes wisdom; if not, it becomes vanity.”
Through his Prize for PeaceTech, Kluz seeks to form a new generation of innovators guided by virtue. 
“Technologies must strengthen humanity, not weaken it,” he stated, convinced that Western civilization itself is at stake. The Church’s mission, he added, is not only to warn against their abuse but also to lead — showing how they can serve truth and peace when rooted in faith.
Referencing Pope St. John Paul II — “Do not be afraid of new technologies!” — Kluz insisted the Church must instill confidence in believers rather than fear. This challenge offers the Church — the greatest expert in humanity — the opportunity to reaffirm, beyond the confusion of algorithms and to the farthest reaches of space, the timelessness of the Gospel. And for this task, a new order of faithful innovators ready to stand alongside the pope could prove useful.
Solène Tadié Solène Tadié is the Europe Correspondent for the National Catholic Register. She is French-Swiss and grew up in Paris. After graduating from Roma III University with a degree in journalism, she began reporting on Rome and the Vatican for Aleteia. She joined L’Osservatore Romano in 2015, where she successively worked for the French section and the Cultural pages of the Italian daily newspaper. She has also collaborated with several French-speaking Catholic media organizations. Solène has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and recently translated in French (for Editions Salvator) Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy by the Acton Institute’s Fr. Robert Sirico.
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