Joanna Moorhead , The Guardian; ‘An unsettling colonial collection’: should the Vatican return items ‘gifted’ to it from Indigenous peoples?

"The origins of this collection lie in an event mounted in 1925, when Pope Pius XI asked Catholic missionaries around the world to send cultural and sacred belongings from the communities they “served” to Rome, for an exhibition that would celebrate the Catholic church’s reach across the planet. It went on for a year, was attended by around a million people, and when it finished many of the objects remained in Rome. The following year, in November 1926, they became the core of a new Vatican Ethnological Museum, then housed at the Lateran Palace. In 1973 it moved across Rome to the Vatican Museums, where it remains to this day.

They’re big on anniversaries at the Vatican – witness the huge service planned next week to celebrate 400 years since the consecration of St Peter’s Basilica – but there’s an eerie silence round the Ethnological Museum, rebranded the Anima Mundi (“soul of the world”) in 2019. A source inside the Vatican told me a decision had been made to lie low over this particular landmark...

Even in 1925 some people questioned the ethics of the exhibition: most notably Anthony Martin Fernando, an Australian Aboriginal who had travelled to Europe to protest at the treatment of his people, and who went to Rome to leaflet visitors to the 1925 ethnological exhibition."

Churches race to set AI’s moral rules before Silicon Valley does; The Washington Times, July 30, 2026

 The Washington Times AI News Desk, The Washington Times ; Churches race to set AI’s moral rules before Silicon Valley does

"Shaw University Divinity School in Raleigh, North Carolina, will launch what organizers call the first doctoral degree in artificial intelligence ethics offered by an accredited theological school in the U.S. or Canada, starting in January.

The Doctor of Education in Artificial Intelligence and Moral Agency comes as religious institutions increasingly race to shape AI’s moral framework before technology companies do it for them.

“We say Shaw was created to provide leadership in building literacy,” said Mark Harden, dean of Shaw University Divinity School. Mr. Harden said the program continues that mission, calling it the school’s “second calling” — building AI literacy “for vulnerable communities with an emphasis on social justice and ethics.”

The push follows Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” warning against letting tech firms alone set AI’s ethical rules, and a $50 million Lilly Endowment gift to Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good to help churches and schools navigate AI."