JD Vance’s Top Donor Brings His War on the Pope to Rome
The billionaire behind JD Vance’s political rise delivered invite-only Antichrist lectures blocks from the Vatican — and Catholic institutions rushed to distance themselves.
Dear friends —
Peter Thiel — the PayPal co-founder, Palantir architect, and early bankroller of JD Vance’s political career — is in Rome this week delivering a four-part, invitation-only lecture series on the Antichrist, just blocks from the Vatican.
Catholic institutions on two continents have rushed to distance themselves from the event, and L’Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, has already called Thiel an “agent of chaos.”
Today’s subscriber-only essay tells the full story: what Thiel is doing in Rome, why Catholic universities refused to host him, and the deeper history of his campaign against Pope Leo XIV, Pope Francis, and the moral authority of the Catholic Church.
It also examines Thiel’s extraordinary influence over Vice President Vance — and what it means that the man who guided Vance into Catholicism is now telling him to ignore the pope.
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Peter Thiel has spent decades funding political projects, bankrolling disruptive technology, and cultivating a worldview that fuses Silicon Valley libertarianism with apocalyptic Christianity. This week, he is bringing that worldview to Rome itself — delivering a four-part, invitation-only lecture series on the Antichrist just blocks from the Vatican.
The lectures, which run from March 15 through 18, were organized by the Vincenzo Gioberti Cultural Association, an Italian Christian political organization, alongside the Cluny Institute, a project incubated at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
According to invitations obtained by the Associated Press, Thiel’s remarks were “anchored on science and technology” and drew on the work of René Girard, Carl Schmitt, Francis Bacon, and John Henry Newman — thinkers who span the spectrum from Catholic intellectual tradition to authoritarian political theory.
What made the Rome event extraordinary was not just the content but the location. The lectures were initially reported to be held at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas — known as the Angelicum — where a young Augustinian friar named Robert Prevost once wrote his doctoral thesis in canon law. Prevost, of course, is now Pope Leo XIV.
The symbolism of Thiel lecturing on the Antichrist at the pope’s own alma mater was too pointed to ignore, and the Angelicum moved quickly to distance itself. “This event is not organized by the University, will not take place at the Angelicum, and is not part of any of our institutional initiatives,” the university said in a statement. The Catholic University of America issued a similar denial.
The institutional retreat was swift and telling. Catholic universities on two continents wanted nothing to do with Peter Thiel’s theology.
Unverified reports on social media suggested Thiel attended a Traditional Latin Mass in Rome before launching his lecture series. I could not confirm that claim.
But confirmed or not, the broader picture is clear enough: one of the most powerful men in American politics traveled to the Eternal City to deliver lectures that directly challenge the moral authority of the Catholic Church’s leader — a leader Thiel has publicly dismissed as a “woke American pope.”
The connection between Thiel and the current occupant of the White House’s second-highest office is central to understanding why these lectures matter.
