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.
WOW… gorgeous a sister/nun who is a webmaster in Vatican website amazing.
Any chance the Catholic Church in the Philippines and the myriad of parishes, schools, institutions advocating/espousing open source? IF they do, I think many would follow suit, including government.
Let us pray that the Open Source bill gets approved next year, sans the anti-business/competition provisions.
now, this i got to see. All praise sister, and linux’s the official os of the church? and maybe god uses linux. (No Joke).
Wow, i’m starting to wonder that if everyone can contribute to opensource, with opensource philosophy of coordination and teamwork, and if majority of the vast use opensource, this would definitely unite the faithful. god must support us.
p.s. great blog fr, i suddenly bumped into your blog. god works in mysterious ways. and maybe you can try placing del.icio.us badges so everyone might be able to bookmark you.. may the force be with you. trully, we need more of you in men.
SOS! My car was broken on road. Should I call to repairx or police?
aazing thiink))
Good night, bloggers =)
Where I may to find posts on this topic?
So nice!
Real post =)
Nice! I’ll do similar post in own blog