May 3, 2017 — Pope Francis gave a surprise recorded TED Talk presented on April 25 at the TED2017 conference, the first time a pope has ever given a TED Talk.

His message: “The only future worth building includes everyone.”

TED is a non-profit organization sponsoring short informative talks, targeted at a wide audience, from experts in different fields.

Pope Francis presented a hopeful message about solidarity to people of all faiths in the 18-minute video in Italian (shown with English subtitles above).

"Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the 'other' is not a statistic, or a number," he said. "We all need each other."

The arrangement was planned a year in advance and included several trips to Rome, employing 40 TED translators who worked to post the pope’s message with subtitles in 20 different languages.

“At a certain point, nearly 80 people across our team and in Vatican City were aware of the talk — but we managed to keep it confidential until the moment we unveiled it at TED2017,” said Bruno Giussani, TED’s international curator.

The pope planned his own message but included initial input from TED curators “to better understand the nature of the TED community.”

“A single individual is enough for hope to exist, and that individual can be you,” Pope Francis said. “And then there will be another ‘you,’ and another ‘you,’ and it turns into an ‘us.’ And so, does hope begin when we have an ‘us?’ No. Hope began with one ‘you.’ When there is an ‘us,’ there begins a revolution.” [Source: TED]