Matthew started his career as an Infantry Officer in the Canadian Forces until retiring to enter the Catholic seminary, studying at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC.
Realizing he was called to marriage, he left seminary and returned to Toronto, initially working for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and then in the professional consulting industry until being offered a position at the Archdiocese of Toronto helping to rebuild the Office of Spiritual Affairs.
He served as Cardinal Collins’ Special Projects Manager until feeling called to found his company, Longbeard.
Matthew’s work with Longbeard would lead him to Rome, where he worked with numerous Vatican organizations such as the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, helping them to more effectively leverage technology to accomplish their mission.
Matthew was invited by Cardinal Michael Czerny to help lay the technological foundations with Google for the Migrants and Refugees Section at the Holy See, which Pope Francis uniquely opted to run personally.
Today, Longbeard is focused on building AI products to serve the Church’s mission. Magisterium AI, the world’s #1 answer engine for the Catholic faith, is currently being used in 190 countries and 75+ languages.
Vulgate is an AI-powered library platform powering a historic digitization project with many of the Pontifical universities in Rome. It’s considered to be one, if not the most, advanced library platform in the world, leveraging computer vision, natural language processing, and generative AI.
Longbeard also operates the Alexandria Digitization Hub in Rome in partnership with the Pontifical Gregorian University. At the Hub, advanced robotic scanners are used to digitize books and manuscripts and universalize access to them.
Longbeard also trained the world’s first Catholic language model, called “Ephrem”.
Matthew is recognized as a thought leader in Catholic AI. He has been featured in Forbes, The Washington Post, CBC, The Economist, The New York Times, and BBC, and regularly delivers keynotes at major AI and Church conferences. In May 2026, he was among the select group of technology leaders invited to the Vatican for the presentation of Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on artificial intelligence and the human person. He has addressed the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE), and has been made available to parliamentarians for a question and answer session in the House of Lords of the United Kingdom Parliament.
Matthew founded the Builders AI Forum, which convenes annually in Rome, to advance the development and scaling of Catholic AI globally.
Matthew currently resides in Rome and Cape Town, South Africa.
Short Bio
Matthew Harvey Sanders, a former infantry officer and seminarian, is the Founder and CEO of Longbeard. The company's flagship product, Magisterium AI, is the world's leading Catholic answer engine, serving users in over 190 countries. Longbeard also developed Vulgate AI, an advanced library platform powering a historic digitization project with the Pontifical universities in Rome. Later this year, the company will release Ephrem, the world's first trained Catholic AI. Matthew was among the technology leaders invited to the Vatican for the presentation of Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on artificial intelligence, and has addressed the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, the Council of European Bishops' Conferences (CCEE), and parliamentarians at the House of Lords of the United Kingdom Parliament.