A Papal Message in Middle-earth: Did Pope Leo Just Troll Peter Thiel?
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An Unexpected Guest in the Vatican
In a 40,000-word encyclical focused on the intersection of artificial intelligence and human dignity, Pope Leo has included exactly one literary reference. It is not a citation from Plato, nor a nod to Dante. Instead, the Pontiff quotes Gandalf, the pipe-smoking wizard from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
The passage, drawn from The Return of the King, argues that it is not humanity’s part to “master all the tides of the world,” but rather to do what is possible for the “succour of those years wherein we are set,” focusing on uprooting evil in the immediate fields to leave a cleaner earth for future generations. While the quote appears on the surface to be a call for humility and steadfast fidelity in the face of dehumanizing technology, the timing and choice of author suggest something more calculated than a simple fondness for high fantasy.
For those immersed in the world of Silicon Valley power brokers, the Tolkien reference is a dog whistle. Specifically, it points toward Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and venture capitalist whose entire corporate ecosystem is built upon the lore of Middle-earth.
The Tolkien Industrial Complex
Thiel’s obsession with Tolkien is not merely a personal hobby; it is a branding strategy. From the naming of his AI-driven data analytics firm Palantir (named after the seeing-stones of Tolkien’s world) to Mithril Capital Management and Valar Ventures, Thiel has systematically mapped his financial empire onto the geography of the Third Age.
This affinity extends to his protégés and allies. J.D. Vance, the current U.S. Vice President, previously founded Narya—named after one of the Three Rings of the Elves. Similarly, Palmer Luckey, the founder of the defense tech startup Anduril, recently launched a digital bank named Erebor, the Lonely Mountain. In these circles, Tolkien’s work is not just literature; it is a blueprint for a specific kind of traditionalist, anti-establishment worldview.
The Clash of Messianisms
The tension between the Vatican and Thiel is not merely aesthetic. For years, Thiel has promoted a distinct, often idiosyncratic interpretation of Christianity, recently manifesting in a series of lectures regarding the “Antichrist.” Leaked recordings of these sessions, as reported by The Guardian, suggest that Thiel views the unification of the world under a single global state as the arrival of the Antichrist. Crucially, Thiel has expressed anxiety over the prospect of a “woke American pope” collaborating with a globalist U.S. president to enforce a one-world governance structure.
This creates a stark ideological contrast. While the Pope’s encyclical calls for a “civilization of love” based on small, steadfast acts of service, Thiel has leaned into a form of “tech messianism.” During a 2025 interview with The New York Times, Thiel argued that AI is the primary tool to break the “stagnation” gripping modern society. He suggested that the risks of AI are secondary to the danger of inaction, advocating for the removal of regulatory “guardrails” that he views as symptoms of “safetyism”—a mindset he has explicitly linked to the rise of the Antichrist.
The Subtext of the Encyclical
By choosing a Gandalf quote to anchor his argument against the hubris of total technological mastery, Pope Leo may be engaging in a rare form of papal commentary on a specific individual. The quote emphasizes that we should not attempt to “master all the tides,” a direct counter-narrative to the Silicon Valley ethos of “moving fast and breaking things” or the belief that AI can solve every human ailment through sheer compute power.
If the Vatican is indeed signaling toward Thiel, the message is clear: the pursuit of a technological utopia that bypasses human morality and regulatory caution is not an act of liberation, but a dangerous form of pride. In the battle between the “civilization of love” and the “acceleration of AI,” the Pope has chosen the wizard’s wisdom over the venture capitalist’s vision.
