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Summer 2003

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A first-time-ever internship program enables computing science students
to work in the Vatican on the website of the Holy See.

On a warm day early last September, John Fiedler ’05 and Bjorn Sayers ’04, two computing science majors, strolled into Vatican City to begin their first day at an unprecedented experiment: an internship at Internet Office of the Holy See. Suddenly, two Swiss Guards appeared, asking for credentials. Fiedler and Sayers didn’t have them and got their first lesson in Vatican communications. E-mails are fine; phone calls are better. Soon they were rescued by the person who was to be their mentor and guide for the next three months: Sr. Judith Zoebelein, F.S.E., technical director of the Internet Office of the Holy See.

Although they didn’t realize it, they would be sharing a building with the Vatican’s most important citizen. However, Pope John Paul II was not yet in residence; he was still at his summer home, Castel Gandolfo, resting and preparing for a grueling autumn schedule.
An internship like no other

Throughout the fall, as Sr. Judith and the rest of the Internet office personnel worked on the expanding site, Fiedler and Sayers worked on two special projects that Sr. Judith had been longing to accomplish but had not had the time or the hands to assign to it.

Fiedler became immersed in the world of the canonized and the candidates. “My assignment was to make a database of all the saints, blessed, venerables, and servants of God,” he said after returning to Villanova for the spring ‘04 semester. “I put about 500 of these into the database. The information was already on the site but it was scattered. I created a feature that enabled the information to be read from the database and presented in a format on-line. Then I had to create a site where the people at the Vatican could add, subtract or edit the material and translate it into six languages.”

Sayers’ task was to help out with a process known as Meta tagging. He explained. “When you go on a search engine like Google, it needs written lines of code that allows it to recognize what’s on various websites. The Vatican has a massive site and it’s been in progress for about seven years. As it grows, there’s an issue of standardization with the computers. My job was to write code that would search through the Holy See website, look for places needed Meta tags and add them, so the search engines would recognize them.”

In addition to working at the Holy See, the two Villanovans took courses at the Libera Universita Internazionale Degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli or, as it’s known in Rome, Luiss. The university is located in northeast Rome off the Via Nomentana. Traveling there from the apartment they shared with two other American students gave Sayers and Fiedler an education in Rome’s Metro and buses. At the Luiss, they studied architecture, language and culture, and met other international students. This aspect of the internship was arranged by Villanova’s International Studies program and the Institute for International Education of Students (I.E.S.).
An autumn of milestones

Fiedler and Sayers could not have picked a more exciting time to be at the Internet Office of the Holy See. The pope held a consistory, in which the members of Sacred College of Cardinals met and welcomed their newest members, who received their trademark red hats in a colorful outdoor ceremony. Pope John Paul officially raised the late Mother Theresa of Calcutta to the status of “blessed,” only one step away from canonization. Finally, the Holy Father celebrated the 25th anniversary of his pontificate, a milestone many observers had thought he would not reach. The interns were able to attend all three ceremonies. They also had the opportunity to tour the Vatican gardens and the extensive excavations of ancient Rome under St. Peter’s Basilica.

These were hectic days for the Internet Office as well. Sr. Judith and her staff provided information to their worldwide audience on these events. At the same time, they continued their regular work of growing the site, adding documents, and making everything accessible in six languages.

It is to Sr. Judith’s credit that with all the demands on her and her staff, they made time to welcome, orient and work with the Villanovans. In November, she flew to the U.S. with a presentation created by the students and presented it to the principals at Villanova. She said she had a wish list which she hoped other Villanova interns would come and fulfill.

Sr. Judith, who is a Franciscan Sister of the Holy Eucharist, also reflected on her philosophy as webmaster of the Holy See site. Naturally, the charism of St. Francis of Assisi influences her. “We Franciscans look at anything in creation as a having a spiritual dimension and having a sacredness about it. It’s only the misuse that makes it bad,” she explained.

She said that one of her chief responsibilities is to make the Vatican website add a sense of the sacred to the Internet. She believes strongly that every new piece of information, every enhancement, has to have a higher purpose to it. It shouldn’t just exist because it can exist. “It has to speak to where the church is going; it must help people in some way.” Sr. Judith said. She hopes the interns will take this lesson with them as they complete their educations and move out into their careers. She said that she hoped the internship has increased the interns’ understanding of Catholicism.

“The structure of our office enables interns to connect immediately with the environment and have a place. Then once they have their place and feel as if they belong, they can open themselves up to a sense of church through the work that they are doing. Hopefully, that link will be fostered when they return to Villanova.”

As an American (she’s from Long Island, N.Y.,) Sr. Judith watched Sayers and Fiedler acclimate themselves to Rome, the Romans and the language, just as she had done herself some twenty years earlier. And when Fiedler experienced some homesickness in the form of a yen for tacos she refrained from pointing out that Rome could boast some of the greatest food on earth. She instead found them a shop that sold imported tacos.

Alum’s networking skills forged the Villanova link.

The fact that two Villanova students could gain academic credit and contribute in their way to one of the busiest and most-accessed websites in the world is a testament to the networking skills of the man who set the internship in motion: Richard J. Anthony ’59 A&S, managing director of The Solutions Network, Inc. a Pennsylvania based management consulting firm specializing in organizational communication, human resource management, and performance improvement. His firm’s clients are a “who’s who” of profit and not-for-profit companies, including Chrysler corporations, Children’s Television Workshop, Alcoa, Dupont, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Matsushita Electronics Corporation of American, Nissan Motor Manufacturing Company, and the states of Hawaii and New York.

Anthony, however, is quick to give credit to his son Mark A. Anthony ( a graduate of St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia), for forging the environment that enabled him to raise the possibility of American students working at the Holy See Internet office.

Mark Anthony is president and chief operating officer of Vaticor, a provider of solutions for IP Infrastructure issues and concerns. Earlier in his career, he worked for Lucent Technologies and traveled frequently to Rome, where he met Sr. Judith. She needed hardware, software, and consulting solutions for her growing Vatican Internet. Anthony contacted colleagues at many of the major brands in technology and was able to obtain donations of materials and services.
After four years, Mark Anthony and the Vatican formalized the arrangement and he set up the Catholic Worldwide Web Corporation, whose mission is to continue providing resources for the Holy See Office of the Internet, fund new projects, and support special projects for the Vatican. Members of the board include Cardinal Edward Egan, archbishop of New York; Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, secretary of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (which oversees the Vatican website office); and James M. Crowley, a Philadelphia attorney and advisor to the Holy See. According to a report in the November report in the Catholic News Service, the corporation already has provided between $4.5 and $6 million of assistance to the Holy See site.

Enter Anthony senior. It occurred to him that Sr. Judith needed human resources for the growing website. He also recognized that his son Mark considers it a personal mission to encourage younger men and women to experience the Roman Catholic Church. So Rick Anthony proposed an idea to Mark. Why not establish a credit internship for computing students from the U.S.? In a short time, the younger Anthony, Archbishop Celli and attorney Crowley were on board. Not surprisingly, Dad’s alma mater, Villanova, became the first university to be invited to send interns.

Rick Anthony said that that he was astonished by the speed with which Villanova’s Internship Office director, Dr. John O’Leary, his assistant Joan Prendergast, and the Rev. Kail C. Ellis, O.S.A., dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, set the internship in motion. “I figured that it would take about 18 months to get this thing approved by Villanova and the Vatican, and that we would send our first interns in the fall of 2004. Instead, we did it by the fall of 2003.”

An agreement was signed in Rome last June by representatives from the Vatican, the Catholic World Wide Web Corporation and, acting for the University, Father Ellis. “It was wonderful that Rick Anthony and his son helped to create this opportunity,” Father Ellis said. “The fact that our students were the first to go to the Vatican is a tribute to the loyalty Rick has for the College and to the caliber of our students. I am also grateful that Archbishop Celli and Sr. Judith accepted our two young Americans so warmly and treated them so well. John O’Leary and I look forward to sending more students, perhaps from other disciplines as well as from computing sciences.”

With this kind of enthusiasm, Sr. Judith can expand her wish list.