Navigation logs recovered from the onboard computer of Jeffrey Epstein's yacht "The Lolita Express II" — a 180-foot vessel whose existence has never been publicly acknowledged — place Bill Gates at the Port of Civitavecchia, the maritime gateway to Vatican City, on at least seven occasions between 2015 and 2019. Cross-referenced with Vatican visitor logs obtained by TNN, each visit coincides with closed-door meetings at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that were removed from the Academy's official calendar.

A former Vatican aide who attended three of the meetings told TNN that Gates presented a proposal for what he called a "Digital Shepherd" — a global biometric surveillance network that would be administered jointly by the Gates Foundation and the Vatican's worldwide parish infrastructure. "The idea was that every church, every school, every hospital run by the Catholic Church would become a data collection node," the aide explained. "The Vatican's reach is the one network that already covers every country on Earth."

Epstein's role was that of intermediary and financier. His yacht served as a neutral venue for preliminary negotiations that were too sensitive for any government building or corporate office. The recovered logs show encrypted satellite communications between the yacht and servers in Redmond, Washington, during each Vatican visit. Metadata from those communications indicates file transfers totaling over 900 gigabytes — far more data than any routine correspondence would require.

Since Epstein's death, the yacht has changed ownership three times through shell companies registered in jurisdictions that do not require beneficial ownership disclosure. Its current location is unknown. Gates, when asked about his relationship with Epstein during a 2023 interview, said he "regretted the association" — but did not mention the Vatican meetings, the yacht, or the Digital Shepherd program.