New Acutis Fellows at Benedictine College Will Promote Saint’s Approach to Technology
The day St. Carlo Acutis, the first millennial saint, was canonized, Benedictine College launched a new technology center. A year later, celebrating his October 12 feast day, that center is launching a fellowship program to form students who can continue the computer-savvy saint’s work.
The Carlo Acutis Fellowship is the newest Program of Distinction at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, through the Benedictine College Center for Technology and Human Dignity.
Students accepted as Carlo Acutis Fellows will be given the tools needed to be leaders in ensuring that emerging technologies serve the human person and not the other way around. Inspired by Pope Leo XIV’s call to address a new industrial revolution amidst the rise of artificial intelligence, the mission of the Center for Technology and Human Dignity is to apply the wisdom of the Church to emerging technologies in light of the dignity and vocation of the human person.
Pope Leo’s 2026 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas inspired the new fellowship program. Benedictine College theologian Mariele Courtois, director of the Center for Technology and Human Dignity, envisions a program in which “the Acutis Fellows will be formed to witness to what the encyclical’s call means for their particular contexts: from their field of work to their parish communities and including the family home. Formation for defending genuine human values is needed in light of developments of rising technologies.”
The program will combine formation in Catholic moral teaching with opportunities to address technological challenges in schools, nonprofit organizations and professional settings.
Fellows will take their development off campus and into the world with opportunities to teach high school students about biomedical ethics and assist nonprofits with technology integration strategies for virtuous technology use. Junior and senior fellows will get to deliver special presentations to students and professionals in Kansas City on data ethics and a vision of technology development that encompasses commitments to justice, charity, and human dignity.
The Fellows will also examine how emerging technologies can respond to suffering, support authentic human relationships and serve the common good. Their formation will address the ethical challenges these technologies pose in the workplace, health care and family life, equipping students to protect human dignity and promote genuine human flourishing.
Courtois is a member of the Vatican Dicastery for Culture and Education’s research group on artificial intelligence.
Courtois said, “The Acutis Fellows will learn about the Catholic moral tradition and the truth of the human person. They will be able to articulate and integrate these insights in their academic studies, professions, and personal vocations as they discern proper uses of technologies.”
Pope Leo XIV teaches that some new technologies offer promises for serving society well. Nonetheless, one of the crucial needs of our time is to determine how we can protect and promote human dignity in an age of advanced technologies that risk replacing the human person in the workplace and in the home.
The fellowship builds on the Center’s first year of programming, which included bringing speakers Dr. Paul Scherz and Father Anselm Ramelow to campus, establishing the Technology and Dignity Club, examining Magnifica Humanitas and co-sponsoring the Symposium on Transforming Culture, “The Church in an Algorithmic Age.”
The Programs of Distinction at Benedictine College are an opportunity for high-achieving scholars to work with one of the college’s Centers of distinction, in order to go deeper in their fields and find practical applications of their discipline. Each program has a specific focus, but the same universal purpose: to provide additional academic avenues of growth and formation to exceptional students.
Interested Benedictine College applicants can learn more about the program and apply here.
Image: Alamy
