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[...] "When I heard about it, I thought it was a joke. Vatican, hackathon—it didn’t add up," says John Franklin, a senior at Northwestern University who found out about VHacks, the event's official name, while participating in another hackathon in 2017. It wasn’t until he saw the event’s themes—creating technological solutions for encouraging social inclusion, promoting interfaith dialogue, and providing resources to migrants and refugees—that he realized it was not only real, but something he wanted to take part in. "I thought, ‘This is unique,’" he says.

And, apart from the unusual experience of hacking inside a room that dates back to 1490, it did prove to be special for Franklin. “At other hackathons, I’m creating, like, a shopping API or something for social media,” he says. “Here, I felt like my pitch means something to people.” Holy See, Holy Do

The Vatican's first-ever codefest came together last year after Jakub Florkiewicz, an MBA student at Harvard Business School, met the Reverend Eric Salobir, a founder of Optic, the first Vatican-affiliated think tank on technology, during a Harvard leadership summit in Rome. He and Salobir, who had already organized hackathons through Optic, began talking about putting one together in Vatican City.

Inside the Vatican's First-Ever Hackathon

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission