Pope Francis with Microsoft President as the Company Creates a Super AI Twin of St Peter's Basilica with an "outlook of faith"

Pope Francis on Monday met with Microsoft's President Brad Smith and the centuries-old Vatican institution that is charged with the maintenance and preservation of St. Peter’s Basilica—the Fabbrica di San Pietro. They collaborated when the Vatican has partnered with Microsoft to create an AI-powered "digital twin" of St. Peter's Basilica, for a virtual experience available to everyone worldwide especially for the Jubilee Year of 2025.  The exhibit was created with the support of Microsoft and Iconem.  It's main purpose it to reach out to people unable to go to Rome for the Holy Year and help the millions who are expected to visit St. Peter's Basilica.

St. Peter's Basilica will be launching a new website to feature the virtual views, streaming services of religious celebrations and podcasts of prayerful meditations as well as an app on  December 1st. Also, in January, young students around the world will be able to explore the basilica on Microsoft's game-based learning platform, Minecraft Education.    "Microsoft had done similar work elsewhere in Europe, creating a 3D-holographic form of France's Mont-Saint-Michel.  Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, working with Iconem, specializing in the digitization of important cultural sites in 3D, experts used cameras, laser scanners and two drones for one month in 2023 to capture almost half a million high-resolution images of St. Peter's Basilica, Smith said. They collected 20 petabytes of data, which would need almost 5 million DVDs to record all that data.
FULL TEXT ADDRESS OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
TO THE DELEGATION OF TECHNICIANS AND PARTNERS OF THE FABRIC OF ST PETER'S
Consistory Hall
Monday, 11 November 2024
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Your Eminence, Dear brothers and sisters!
I greet you with gratitude, because your visit attests to the industriousness with which you are undertaking new projects and collaborations for the benefit of Saint Peter’s Basilica. This house of prayer for all peoples (cf. Is 56:7; Mt 21:13) was entrusted to us by those who have preceded us in faith and in the apostolic ministry. Therefore, it is a gift and a task to take care of it, both in a spiritual and material sense, also through the most recent technologies.
Such tools particularly challenge our creativity and responsibility. Indeed, the correct and constructive use of a potential that is certainly useful, but ambivalent, depends on us. At times, it happens that the tool overrides the purpose for which it should serve: it is as if the frame were to become more important than the picture. It is therefore necessary to govern technology, recalling that its products are good not only when they work, but primarily when they help us grow.
This principle applies even more to Saint Peter’s Basilica, and for the various interventions it requires, so that it may be for all visitors a living place of faith and history, a hospitable dwelling, a temple for the encounter with God and with the brothers and sisters who come to Rome from all over the world. Everyone, truly everyone, must feel welcomed in this great house: those who have faith and those in search of faith; those who come to contemplate the artistic beauty of Rome and those who want to decipher its cultural codes.
In this regard, let us recall that the original nucleus of the Basilica is the tomb of Peter, the disciple whom the Lord Jesus elected as first among the apostles, entrusting to him the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven (cf. Mt 16:18). This is evidenced by the huge Greek and Latin inscriptions that from above accompany the faithful to the altar of the Cathedra. The planned works should have the same purpose: to accompany the men and women of today; to support their journey as disciples, following the example of Simon Peter. Therefore, I would like to leave you three criteria to guide your work: the listening of prayer, the gaze of faith, the pilgrim's touch. Let these senses, at once bodily and spiritual, intelligently order the initiatives to be taken.
First of all, listening to prayer: I encourage the commitment of the Fabric and its collaborators in the adoption of technologies that favour not only an interactive participation of people, but above all their awareness of the sacred place, which is a space for meditation.
Secondly, the outlook of faith, to use the cutting-edge tools with a missionary style, not touristic, without seeking the attraction of special effects, but rather investing in new means to narrate the faith of the Church and the culture it has shaped.
Finally, the touch of the pilgrim: throughout the centuries, sculptural, pictorial and architectural art were placed at the service of the people of God using the best technologies of the time. Our predecessors worked wonderfully! May every new project be in continuity with the same pastoral intent.
Thank you for your resourcefulness. I bless all of you and your work from my heart. And I ask you, please, to pray for me.
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Holy See Press Office Bulletin, 11 November 2024