Born in Rome on 20 July 1973, the son of engineer Angelo Benanti and teacher Andreina Albani. In 1986, his family moved to
Frascati, a comune in
Lazio. After having matured his vocation, in 1999, he left the university and entered the
Third Regular Order of Saint Francis, in the convent of
Massa Martana, where he spent his probationary year and
novitiate. On 16 September 2001, he got his
Franciscan habit. He was ordained a
priest on 23 May 2009. He served as the first councilor general and prosecutor general of the Order for the six-year period 2013–2019. In his baccalaureate studies in theology at the Theological Institute of Assisi (2001–2006), he had as a teacher the moralist
Giovanni Cappelli. At the
Pontifical Gregorian University, he obtained his licentiate in 2008 and his doctorate in
moral theology in 2012. His doctoral thesis is entitled , (
The Cyborg: Body and Corporeality in the Post-Human Era) and won the
Bellarmino-Vedovato Award as the best doctoral thesis in public and social ethics in 2012. In 2013 and 2014, he attended
The Intensive Bioethics Course at the
Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Institute of Ethics of
Georgetown University. Since 2008, he works as a professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Theological Institute of Assisi, and at the Pontifical College Leoni d'Anagni. In addition to institutional courses on
sexual morality and
bioethics, he deals with
neuroethics,
technology ethics,
artificial intelligence, and post-human intelligence. Since 2015, he has tried to apply and develop an ethical framework for artificial intelligence by developing the concepts of
algorithm and
algocracy. Since 2020, in collaboration with
Sebastiano Maffettone, a political philosopher, he has explored the vital, relational, social and communicative, labor and economic dimensions, seen as the results of the interaction, with complex ethical implications, between the resources offered by the virtual and interactive reality and social and individual existence. This path leads him to the recognition of the creation of a hybrid reality, between
utopia and
dystopia, which takes the name of
paraferno. These concepts are studied in depth through a series of editorials jointly signed between the two authors published in the Italian newspaper
Corriere della Sera. In 2018,
Vincenzo Paglia named him a corresponding member of the
Pontifical Academy for Life with a particular mandate for the world of artificial intelligence. In February 2019, he was appointed Provincial Minister of the Religious Province of Saint Francis of Assisi of the Third Regular Order of Saint Francis after an assembly convened in
Assisi, Italy. On 4 November 2019,
Pope Francis appointed him
Councilor of the Apostolic Penitentiary (the oldest
dicastery of the
Roman Curia and the first of its tribunals). On 11 November 2019, the Pontiff appointed him Consultant of the
Pontifical Council for Culture, whose regent was Cardinal
Gianfranco Ravasi, and which aims to "foster relations between the Holy See and the world of culture, especially promoting dialogue with different cultures" of our time, so that "the civilization of man is more and more open to the
Gospel, and that lovers of science, literature and the arts feel recognized by the Church as people at the service of the true, of the good and beautiful". On 12 February 2021, he was appointed by Pope Francis as an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. == Works ==