Riot for peace & Love: Catholic Influencers and Digital Missionaries welcome Jubilee of Youth


11:30 Wed, 30 Jul 2025

Throughout the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries, people asked how can we make the Jubilee go viral on social control media?

I pointed out there are a number of surefire ways to go viral:

On Tuesday, we had a bit of all that. A tech insider waiting with a camera as a well-intentioned riot got underway amongst pilgrims anxious to catch a glimpse of the Pope. The Jubilee of Digital Missionaries closed with an evening concert in Piazza del Risorgimento. My camera captured the moment of joy as Catholic influencers passed the baton to pilgrims arriving for the much bigger Jubilee of Youth.

I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. My birthday is the day the Berlin Wall came down and by coincidence, my camera was running at the very moment the wall came down in Rome last night.

People asked about my Debian lanyard and it became part of a sermon by the Pope himself:

There is a second challenge in this mission: always look for the “suffering flesh of Christ” in every brother and sister you encounter online. Today we find ourselves in a new culture, deeply characterized and formed by technology. It is up to us – it is up to each one of you – to ensure that this culture remains human.

It is a culture that I have been documenting carefully for some time, with an emphasis on the harassment and abuse in the Debian group. The story shocks people. The church has given a lot of thought to the issues involved, especially euthanasia. In Debian, Mark Shuttleworth became filthy rich while Joel "Espy" Klecker, an underage youth in the group, was tricked to work for free. Klecker's neighbors in the state of Oregon were voting to allow him to take his own life. They never formally confirmed if he chose euthanasia. Leaked emails reveal the final weeks of his life were planned in some detail, even to the point where his final messages forecast the day he would die. When you put all the facts in order, it is an extremely uncomfortable situation. Some time after Klecker died, we clearly had a suicide cluster but due to the intense secrecy, nobody had dared to speculate that the first death may have been a case of euthanasia. The church has expressed some concern about the risks of euthanasia. Debian has a server named after Klecker. Other developers interact with the Klecker server on a daily basis.

The deaths continued. After the Debian Day suicide, Shuttleworth told us in a secret debian-private email:

None of us should judge Frans' choices: there are many valid reasons to choose one's end. But we should be careful not to put others at risk.

Was there a valid reason for Adrian von Bidder to die a few months later, on Palm Sunday, which was the very same day that Carla and I got married? If Shuttleworth had anticipated a risk, why hadn't it been studied and mitigated? If von Bidder's death was both anticipated and avoidable then somebody could be held responsible for it. What could be a more relevant story in Rome as we confront the relationship between technology and the church?

Over $120,000 has been spent on legal fees to try and censor evidence about this culture and the suicides in particular. Yet invalid judgments created by extraordinarily corrupt lawyers who have not one ethical bone in their body can not bring somebody back after they die.

The Pope explicitly denounced the culture of humiliating people that grips groups like Debian. The words of the Pope himself:

Science and technology influence the way we live in the world, even affecting how we understand ourselves and how we relate to God, how we relate to one another. But nothing that comes from man and his creativity should be used to undermine the dignity of others. Our mission – your mission – is to nurture a culture of Christian humanism, and to do so together. This is the beauty of the “network” for all of us.

In those few words, did the Pope capture the link between Debian culture and Debian deaths? When people are tricked to work evenings and weekends without pay based on totally false promises of a social agenda and public recognition, that is clearly an attack on our dignity.

During my time at Catholic College Bendigo, I had also been an alter boy at St Joesph's church in Quarry Hill. It is an odd coincidence that in Rome this week I was able to meet up with rock star priest Fr Rob Galea from the neighboring parish of St Kilian's. I showed Fr Galea the picture of Fr Sean O'Connell on the front of The Age in 1977.

An old newspaper article from 1 February 1951 recounts the rebirth of St Kilian's parish and the appointment of Fr Timothy (Tim) Scott at Pyramid Hill. Fr Scott's final posting was at St Joseph's where he gave us responsibility for lighting the candles and organizing small processions during the mass. None of our processions ever ended up like this ...

 

Pope Leo's speech also expressed concerns about the challenges of artificial intelligence for society:

the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence will mark a new era in the lives of individuals and society as a whole

A 2004 article on the Pentagon web site claims the first autonomous drone was tested at Graytown, which is also in the Diocese of Sandhurst. Can that be linked to a former alter boy?

Pentagon, artificial intelligence, Graytown

 

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