Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Lectures in Rome: The Tech Billionaire Bringing Apocalyptic Ideas to the Vatican’s Doorstep

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This is not Thiel’s first time exploring these themes. He gave a similar four-part lecture series in San Francisco last September. In a November essay in the Catholic magazine First Things, Thiel mused:

“Christians debated these prophecies for millennia. Who was the Antichrist? When would he arrive? What would he preach?”

As Fortune reports, in Thiel’s interpretation, the Biblical Antichrist figure prophesied to oppose Jesus Christ might emerge as a reassuring actor who exerts control by promising safety and an end to the “existential risk” of technological development.

Thiel is known to be deeply interested in apocalyptic concepts — the Antichrist and Armageddon — and speaks of them in terms of the existential choices facing humanity today.

What He’ll Discuss

According to invitations for the event, Thiel’s lectures will “be anchored on science and technology, and will comment on the theology, history, literature and politics of the Antichrist.”

Religious thinkers Thiel will draw upon include:

• René Girard
• Francis Bacon
• Jonathan Swift
• Carl Schmitt
• John Henry Newman

The Controversy

Thiel’s presence in Rome has not gone over well with everyone. As The Independent reports, Thiel has previously attacked Pope Leo XIV as a “woke American pope” — adding another layer of controversy to his visit.

The tech billionaire is also a co-founder of Palantir, the data-mining company that has been assisting the Trump administration’s migrant deportation crackdown. He was an early donor to Vice President JD Vance’s political career.

The lectures remain closed to the public, but the controversy they have generated is anything but. As the world watches, a tech billionaire known for his apocalyptic worldview has brought his warnings about the Antichrist to the doorstep of the Catholic Church — and the Church wants no part of it.

Read more about the controversy on Reuters.