Operations. Communication. Leadership formation. Technology. Built by someone doing it every day inside a real Catholic parish and school in Austin, Texas.
“The question is not merely what AI can do, but who we are becoming through the technologies we build.”
Pope Leo XIV
Message to the Builders AI Forum
Pontifical Gregorian University — November 2025
Pope Leo XIV didn’t pick his name by accident. He chose it because the last Leo faced an industrial revolution and gave the Church a framework for responding — Rerum Novarum. This Leo is saying: we’re in that moment again. The question isn’t whether Catholic institutions will change. It’s whether they’ll lead the change or be left behind by it.
Most work on Catholic modernization happens from the outside — consultants, conferences, think pieces. This work happens from inside a real parish and school, every day. That means encountering the tools that don’t fit, the workflows that were never designed, the staff doing extraordinary work with software built for someone else. It means knowing why giving dropped in October and what actually moves it back up.
This work is broader than technology. It’s operations. Leadership formation. Communication systems. Culture change. The software is one expression of a larger conviction: Catholic institutions can run with the same intentionality and excellence we bring to the liturgy.
Human dignity at the center. Always. But the institutions have to evolve — and they’re going to need people willing to do the work from inside.
Three areas of focus — each grounded in lived experience running a real Catholic institution.
Seminary gives priests deep formation — theology, pastoral care, spiritual direction. It doesn’t give them finance, HR, communications, or change management. And among those who lead Catholic institutions, some lean into innovation and some don’t. Effective modernization has to meet leaders where they are and build from there.
Every parish and school has its own culture — things it will embrace and things it will quietly reject. Staff have to actually adopt new ways of working, not just be told to. And the community itself has to come along. This isn’t tech evangelism. It’s organizational change, which is slower, messier, and more human than any tool rollout.
The goal isn’t to build software. It’s to understand where the real problems are and apply technology intelligently — whether that means building something new, connecting existing tools, or knowing when a spreadsheet is still the right answer. The institutions that modernize well won’t be the ones that adopt the most technology. They’ll be the ones that use it most wisely.
Every Catholic parish and school is sitting on a rich, largely uncaptured web of knowledge — who belongs, who leads, who gives, which families are struggling, which students are thriving, what decisions were made and why, and how the institution actually operates day to day.
Right now, most of that lives in someone’s head. When they leave, it goes with them.
The work here is, collectively, building that context layer — the institutional memory and relationship graph that makes technology genuinely useful inside a Catholic institution. Not a chatbot bolted onto a website. A living knowledge base about how this community operates, built from everything that happens inside it.
Each tool is an entry point. Each one feeds the layer. The layer is what compounds over time.
Every EdTech company is selling schools a better tool. This is something different: a school that already knows itself.
Digital ministry signup and management for parish communities. Replaces paper forms and spreadsheets with a trackable system that staff actually want to use.
AI-powered tool that generates print-ready PDFs for Mass worship aids and parish bulletins. Replaces Canva and manual design work with a structured form and automatic liturgical season rules.
An AI ethics elective for middle schoolers exploring technology, identity, and what it means to be human. Built and taught at a Catholic school in Austin — the first module on the Classroom Platform.
A living directory of Catholic institutions — parishes, schools, dioceses — built to connect communities, surface local events, and make the Church more findable.
AI-powered parent communication for Catholic schools and parishes. Processes bulletins and calendars, answers parent questions 24/7, and surfaces what matters most — without adding to staff workload.
The underlying technology behind The Human Code — AI-enabled discussion capture, transcription, and feedback tools for Catholic classrooms. Designed to be subject-agnostic and expandable across any course.
Donor intelligence platform for Catholic churches and schools. Ingests giving records from disconnected systems, resolves duplicate identities, and surfaces targeted outreach lists for staff.
Curriculum and standards alignment tools for Catholic school teachers. Reduces planning overhead so educators can focus on what they came to do.
Story-driven games where students navigate history as active participants — making moral choices, managing consequences, and encountering Church teaching through play. Built for classrooms, with teacher dashboards and grade-band-aware content.
AI-assisted grant discovery built for Catholic schools. Surfaces opportunities schools already qualify for but don’t have the time or staff to find on their own.
Secure, searchable digital management of sacramental records — baptism, confirmation, marriage — built for the long-term stewardship needs of Catholic institutions.
Business education for parish leaders and priests. Finance, communications, team management — grounded in Catholic social teaching. The operational knowledge most seminary programs skip.
Two ways to be part of what’s being built — whether you want to help shape it or be among the first to use it.
Are you a developer, designer, or Catholic institutional leader who believes these institutions deserve better tools? The portfolio here is real and in motion — I’m looking for people who want to go on this journey together. You bring expertise. I bring institutional knowledge and a live testing ground that few people have access to.
These tools are being built for institutions like yours. Beta testers get early access, direct input into what gets built, and the chance to shape software that will serve Catholic communities for years. You don’t need a technical team — just willingness to try things and tell me honestly what works.
Most work on Catholic modernization is written from the outside. This is built from the inside — by someone running a real parish and school every day.
I’m the COO of a Catholic parish and school in Austin, Texas. Four years in, I’ve seen what actually breaks, what pastors actually need, and what parents actually ask. Before this: nearly four years at Microsoft, four startups, and 25 years building products across industries. MBA from UT McCombs.
In the summer of 2024, before AI in Catholic institutions was much of a conversation, I started quietly running experiments — using AI tools on back-office projects to understand where they actually helped and where they didn’t. No announcements, no strategy deck. Just hands-on work to find out what was real.
That led to the BAIF.ai conference in Rome in 2025 — a gathering of Catholic technologists, researchers, and builders working on AI and the Church’s mission. I teach an AI ethics elective to middle schoolers.
The institution I work in is my lab. Everything here is tested there first — not in theory, but in practice, with real staff, real parents, and real operational stakes.
New projects, honest progress updates, and occasional thinking on Catholic institutional modernization. No noise.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.