DENVER (CO)
Crux
October 4, 2017
By John L. Allen Jr.
Look around at the lineup at an Oct. 3-6 summit at Rome’s Gregorian University on “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” and it’s a host of experts from the biggest outfits in their various fields — Harvard, Interpol, Facebook, UNICEF, Microsoft, and so on. It’s the cream of the crop, and it’s another illustration of the Vatican’s unique power to convene, since basically nobody can say no to an invite from the pope.
Rome – Ever since the collapse of the Papal States in 1870, the Vatican has had to make its way in the world as a “soft power,” relying on moral authority and the pope’s massive bully pulpit to move the ball on matters it perceives as priorities.
That soft power takes many forms, but one is on especially clear display this week at Rome’s Jesuit-sponsored Gregorian University: The power to convene.
One of the near-universal truths about the Vatican’s role in the world today is that virtually nobody can say no to an invitation from the pope. You can put together almost any sort of event you want, from a study of artificial intelligence to a symposium on punk rock in the 1980s, and if it comes with the promise of face time with the pope at some point, the world’s leading authorities on the subject inevitably will show up.
That’s not the only reason they come, of course – they come because they’re passionate about the subject, because Rome is not the worst place to spend a few days, and because they’ll see valued friends and colleagues who plow the same furrows. Still, however, it’s fair to say that the magnetic attraction of the pope doesn’t hurt.
Oct. 3-6, the Gregorian is hosting a major international summit titled “Child Dignity in the Digital World,” devoted to the effort to combat child abuse and exploitation online, especially the so-called “Dark Web.” It’s a vast region of the internet, perhaps the overwhelming majority, which is anonymous and designed to be impossible to detect, where 80 percent of the traffic is believed to be driven by child pornography.
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