🙏 From Don Oreste Benzi to MyZubster: Can Faith, Sharing and Digital Freedom Meet?
Some projects begin with technology.
Others begin much earlier, with the values that shape a person's life.
For me, the story of MyZubster is connected to something that happened long before I started writing code.
It is connected to Don Oreste Benzi, the Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII, the experience of community and sharing, and a journey to Lourdes.
Today, I find myself asking a question:
Can the values I learned through the Church find a place inside the digital world I'm trying to build?
And perhaps an even bigger question:
Can the Church and new digital technologies find a respectful compromise?
✝️ What I Learned from Don Oreste
I had the opportunity to be confessed by Don Oreste Benzi within the experience connected to the Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII and its family-house communities.
For me, that experience was important.
I learned that Christianity isn't only something you talk about.
It can also mean:
- sharing;
- welcoming others;
- helping people who are struggling;
- living together;
- giving something without expecting something in return;
- recognizing dignity in every person.
These values stayed with me.
They became part of the way I look at society.
And years later, they also influenced the way I think about technology.
🏠 Community Before Technology
The family-house model of the Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII gave me an important perspective.
A community isn't simply a collection of individuals.
People can share responsibilities.
People can contribute according to their abilities.
People can help each other.
That idea is surprisingly similar to the philosophy behind open-source software.
In open source:
One person
↓
creates something
↓
shares it
↓
another person improves it
↓
another person tests it
↓
the whole community benefits
The code is shared.
Knowledge is shared.
Work is shared.
This doesn't mean technology is religion.
It means that some human values can exist in both worlds.
🌍 Lourdes
I have also been to Lourdes.
For me, Lourdes represents faith, pilgrimage, hope and community.
It is a place where people arrive with different stories and different difficulties.
Nobody has exactly the same journey.
But people meet in the same place.
That experience made me think about something that is often forgotten in technology:
technology should ultimately serve people.
A blockchain, an AI agent, a robot or a payment system has no meaning by itself.
Its value depends on what people use it for.
🙏 Don Oreste and the Question of Canonization
Don Oreste Benzi has an important place in the history of the Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII and in the lives of many people who encountered his work.
The question of his possible canonization belongs to the Catholic Church and its official process.
I cannot claim that a particular event is a miracle recognized by the Church.
But I can speak about my own experience.
For me, the encounter with Don Oreste was something that had a profound impact on my life.
And I sometimes wonder whether the values he transmitted could continue through new generations and even through new technologies.
Not by turning technology into religion.
But by asking technology to serve the same fundamental principles:
dignity, sharing, community and service.
💻 Then Came MyZubster
Years later, I started building MyZubster.
At first, it was a technical experiment.
Then it became something much larger.
The ecosystem started connecting:
- AI;
- robotics;
- IoT;
- open-source software;
- digital payments;
- community bounties;
- smart agriculture;
- autonomous systems.
And I began to notice something.
The architecture was different from the environment in which I had learned those values.
But the underlying question was similar:
How can individuals contribute something useful to a community?
🪙 Why Monero?
This is where the discussion becomes more complicated.
MyZubster explores Monero (XMR) as a privacy-focused digital payment technology.
For me, the interesting question isn't whether the Church should suddenly become a cryptocurrency organization.
It shouldn't.
The question is much simpler:
Can the Church recognize that digital technology is becoming part of everyday life and explore how it can be used responsibly?
There are legitimate concerns:
- regulation;
- accounting;
- taxation;
- transparency;
- financial controls;
- safeguarding;
- volatility;
- protection of vulnerable people.
Those questions cannot simply be ignored.
🤝 Finding a Compromise
I don't think the answer should be:
Church versus technology.
I think there could be another approach:
Christian Values
+
Community
+
Responsible Technology
+
Open Source
+
Privacy
↓
New Digital Community Tools
The Church doesn't have to abandon its principles to explore technology.
And technology doesn't have to abandon privacy, human dignity or responsibility to work with the Church.
There could be a middle ground.
🌱 What Could MyZubster Offer?
Imagine a parish or community organization using open-source tools to:
- manage community gardens;
- organize volunteers;
- publish events;
- coordinate donations;
- build educational applications;
- monitor environmental projects;
- teach young people programming;
- develop robotics projects;
- experiment with privacy-preserving digital tools.
The technology remains a tool.
The community remains the center.
🙏 The "Programmatore Parroco"
This is also why I started thinking about the idea of the "Programmatore Parroco".
A parish volunteer shouldn't need to become a professional software engineer.
They could learn enough to build a simple website.
Another volunteer could create an event calendar.
Someone else could develop a garden-monitoring application.
A young person could contribute code.
An older person could contribute knowledge and experience.
Everyone has something to give.
That is what I remember from the idea of community.
🕊️ Could There Be a Meeting Point?
Perhaps the future doesn't require choosing between:
faith OR technology
but instead:
faith + human values + responsible technology.
The Church has centuries of experience dealing with questions of human dignity, solidarity and community.
The technology industry has created new tools for communication, collaboration and economic interaction.
The challenge is finding the point where they can meet without either side losing its identity.
🌐 My Personal Hope
I don't expect the Catholic Church to simply adopt MyZubster, Monero or any other technology.
That would not be realistic.
Instead, I hope for a conversation.
A conversation about:
- open source;
- privacy;
- digital identity;
- community technology;
- AI;
- robotics;
- responsible digital payments;
- education;
- solidarity.
If there is a legitimate way to use these technologies while respecting Church law, civil law and ethical principles, perhaps there is room for experimentation.
❤️ From a Confessional to Code
When I look back, the connection feels strange.
A confession with Don Oreste.
The experience of the Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII.
The values of sharing.
Lourdes.
Then years later:
GitHub.
Open source.
AI.
Robots.
Monero.
MyZubster.
They seem like completely different worlds.
But perhaps the common thread is not technology.
It is people.
Technology changes.
The need for dignity, community and solidarity doesn't.
🙏 A Personal Dedication
This project is not an attempt to rewrite the teachings of the Church.
It is not a claim that Monero is a religious technology.
It is not a claim that MyZubster has any official relationship with the Catholic Church.
It is a personal reflection.
I carry with me what I learned from people who taught me the importance of sharing.
And I am now trying to understand how those values can survive in a world that is becoming increasingly digital.
Perhaps the right question isn't:
"Will the Church accept cryptocurrency?"
Perhaps the better question is:
"How can we make digital technology serve people, communities and human dignity?"
That is the conversation I would like to have.
And if one day the Church, developers, communities and technologists can find a responsible compromise between faith and digital innovation, perhaps something genuinely useful can emerge.
Not a new religion.
Not a new financial system for the Church.
But a new way of sharing knowledge, tools and opportunities.
Just as I learned years ago:
what we have can be shared.
Today, that can include code.
🌱 Share knowledge.
Build together.
Protect people.
Serve the community.
And keep the human being at the center.
Top comments (0)