Over the past year, Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist, has issued some of the most exclusive invites Silicon Valley visionaries could aspire to receive. The Palantir and PayPal co-founder has hosted a series of lectures around the world dedicated to discussing his own views on the biblical Antichrist, and how it relates to the modern-day discussion of technological risk.

Thiel has spoken about his theories publicly—most notably during a New York Times podcast interview last year—but his deepest musings have been reserved for private sessions with selective audiences in San Francisco and Paris over the past few months. On Sunday, Thiel began hosting the latest edition, a planned four-day lecture series in Rome, first reported last week by the Associated Press.

Theory of the end-times

The contents of Thiel’s sessions are private, but likely to follow a similar format to his previous lectures. In Thiel’s telling, the biblical Antichrist figure prophesied to oppose Jesus Christ to bring on the apocalypse might emerge in the form of a reassuring actor who exerts control by promising safety and an end to the “existential risk” of technological development. It’s a theological interpretation that has turned heads among Silicon Valley elites, and caught Thiel in the crosshairs of both the Italian government and the Holy See.

In Thiel’s framing, the Antichrist is not an outwardly malevolent figure, but rather a comforting administrator, one that promises tighter control of innovation to stamp out the risk of runaway technology—particularly artificial intelligence—replacing humanity. This positioning is a farce, in Thiel’s telling, as the Antichrist is in reality quietly consolidating power and control over society. He has criticized groups wary of technological progress, including AI skeptics and environmentalists such as Greta Thunberg, for being pawns of the Antichrist. 

Thiel’s vision paints Silicon Valley technologists not only as architects of humanity’s future, but as protectors of civilization, often grounding his arguments in his Christian beliefs. His argument blends theological language with Silicon Valley’s anxieties over AI, transhumanism, and decay of meaning, and has been greeted with muted praise by some tech figures, such as fellow Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.

Thiel’s frosty Italian greeting

Thiel’s theory has plenty of skeptics too, and it’s not just AI doomers and climate activists. Ahead of his arrival in Rome, government officials and authorities in the Church pushed back against his theological stance.

“Thiel is above all a political theologian operating at the very heart of the Silicon Valley ecosystem,” Paolo Benanti, a priest who has advised two papacies on matters related to technology ethics and artificial intelligence, wrote in an essay published Saturday, adding that Thiel’s theories are best understood as a “radicalization” of Western values including individuality, technological progress, and the spirit of competition.

“Peter Thiel does not believe humanity can be redeemed,” read an article published last week in Avvenire, a newspaper owned by a conference of Italian bishops. It argued that Thiel’s vision favors replacing democracy and the right of law with an elite “superplutocracy” that would “monitor and protect humanity from the arrival of the Antichrist.” The article additionally claims Thiel’s description of the Antichrist applies to “anyone who places limits on unlimited progress.”

The Catholic Church has taken a more assertive stance on technological advancement in recent years, particularly when it comes to AI. Moral regulation of AI was frequently mentioned by the late Pope Francis. Leo XIV, his incumbent successor, similarly urged audiences during a speech last December to “pause and reflect” on how AI might impact children, and how the technology could be guided to serve the “common good.” 

Thiel’s event in Rome was organized in partnership with the Cluny Institute, an organization housed within the Catholic University of America, and the Vincenzo Gioberti Cultural Association, according to the AP. Neither replied to Fortune’s request for comment. 

In a press release last week announcing Thiel’s event in Rome, the association, which has ties to Italy’s far-right, warned of “more or less hidden” forces that were “bent on destroying what remains of the West.” The association praised Thiel for having the “courage and intellectual liberty” to discuss these dangers.

But those same themes have provoked skepticism and even hostility among some Italian politicians for more grounded reasons. During a parliamentary session this month, lawmakers criticized Thiel’s “scandalous ideas,” arguing that they verged on ideological extremism while calling for more transparency on the relationship between the Italian government and Palantir, the defense technology firm Thiel co-founded and currently acts as chairman for. 

Outside parliament, Thiel’s supporters frame his warnings as a defense of Western spiritual identity amid mounting technological disruption. In Italy’s polarized political climate, however, his Antichrist theory has become as much a political flashpoint as a philosophical one.