The Vatican uses Linux. This was recently revealed by Sr. Judith Zoebelein, an FSE nun. She is not your generic Franciscan nun though. She is the webmaster of the Vatican website. Yes, it’s a sister who runs the website of the world’s oldest institution. And she’s been doing it since 1995. To me, that makes her a veritable geek in her own right. Her official title is Technical Director of the Internet Office of the Holy See.

She recently presented a talk at LIFT, a conference about the challenges and opportunities of technology in our society. Right after the talk, a bunch of conference participants chatted with her about her being a techie sister and her work at the Vatican Internet Office. It was halfway through their lively conversation that Sr. Judith said, “It’s all unix and linux-based”, referring to the tools and technology used in her Vatican office.

Please click here to watch the video of their conversation. Well, it makes perfect sense to me that the Vatican runs Linux on their computers. The philosophy and principles of Free Software and that of Open Source are very much compatible with the Social Teachings of the Catholic Church and the Christian ideals of communion, cooperation and sharing.

I fervently hope that local churches all over the world will follow the lead of the Vatican in utilizing Linux in their digital ministries. I cannot help but imagine the Pope surfing the net with Firefox and reading emails with Thunderbird. Or playing his favorite classical music with Amarok. He might be writing an encyclical now using OpenOffice.