Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Pope Francis at the Vatican and presented the leader of the Catholic Church with a drone on Monday.
Zuckerberg said he and his wife Priscilla Chan saw the visit as a huge honor, and wrote in a Facebook post that they told the pontiff “how much we admire his message of mercy and tenderness, and how he’s found new ways to communicate with people of every faith around the world.”
The visit was part of a trip that the billionaire philanthropist couple announced after a devastating earthquake in Italy last week killed hundreds.
Zuckerberg said they presented Pope Francis a model of a solar-powered unmanned designed aircraft that Facebook has constructed to address concerns that people in impoverished countries don’t have Internet access because of a lack of infrastructure.
“We gave him a model of Aquila, our solar-powered aircraft that will beam Internet connectivity to places that don’t have it. And we shared our work with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to help people around the world,” he said.
The actual aircraft, which is bigger than a Boeing 737, completed its first test flight this summer. It is designed to fly for 90 days at a time, and can send a connection out as far as 60 miles away.
Vatican press office director Greg Burke said in a statement that the couple and the pope “spoke about how to use communications technology to alleviate poverty, encourage a culture of encounter and to communicate a message of hope, especially to the most disadvantaged.”
Taking on a role traditionally reserved for politicians, Zuckerberg also met with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to discuss the natural disaster and economic development.
