About Church & Code
The site, the author, and what we're doing here.
Church & Code is a reference site on Catholic teaching about artificial intelligence: what the Church has said, what it means, and what it implies for the people building, deploying, and using these technologies. It is written and maintained by Chris Hoar.
About the Author
Chris Hoar works with European enterprise AI companies across the US and Europe, helping build commercial pathways for technologies that aim to offer a sovereign alternative to the dominant US hyperscalers.
He also works with the Domus Communis Foundation, a Catholic foundation engaged in the practical questions of how technology, work, and community intersect in light of the Church's social teaching.
Church & Code grew out of those two halves of his work: the daily reality of enterprise AI on one side, and Catholic teaching on what technology is for on the other. The site exists because there is a genuine gap between the journalism covering Vatican statements on AI and the kind of clean, sourced, citation-ready reference content people need to actually understand them.
What this site is (and isn't)
Church & Code is a reference site, not a news site. Most Catholic publications covering AI are doing journalism: chronological articles, reaction pieces. Those have their place. This site is different: each page is intended to be the cleanest, best-sourced reference on its topic, updated as the underlying story develops.
The site is written with two audiences in mind:
- Catholics asking what their faith says about AI: parents, educators, priests, students, and curious laypeople who want to know what the Church actually teaches, not what they've been told it teaches.
- AI practitioners and policy people: engineers, researchers, executives, and policymakers who want to take Catholic moral tradition seriously as a contribution to AI ethics, alongside other frameworks.
Where possible, every claim links to a primary source. Where only secondary reporting is available, we cite the original journalist.
Get in touch
Found an error? Want to suggest a topic? Working in this space and want to compare notes?
Email Chris directly at previewcapital@gmail.com.