As my esteemed colleague Joshua Wolens once wrote, I "never thought I'd die fighting side-by-side with the Pope." Pope Leo XIV has made AI a key theme of his papacy, and his thoughts on the technology at times could not be clearer: he says it's "turning people into passive consumers of unthought thoughts".
In a private exchange with priests of the Diocese of Rome last week, the Pope responded to questions after giving a speech. Advising priests to “rekindle the fire” of their ministry, Pope Leo went on to give an example of just what kind of fire he means, and bemoaned what he described as a trend of priests using AI to write their homilies.
One of the priests present described the exchange to EWTN News, saying that the Pope recommended knowing "the community in which one lives and works. It is necessary to know the reality well. To love your community, you must know it. Therefore, a real shared effort is needed to understand it better and thus face together all the challenges that arise."
Then the sting in the tail:
"The pope also invited us to use our brains more and not artificial intelligence [AI] to prepare homilies, as he now sees and hears happening," said the priest. "And here the pope made a strong recommendation regarding prayer: We priests must pray—remain with the Lord, that is—not reduce everything to the breviary or to a few brief moments of prayer, but truly learn again to listen to the Lord."
As AI dunks go, "use your brains more" is certainly a good one. "Personally, I was happy," said the priest. "We greatly appreciated the pope for a very, very concrete speech."
The Pope has on a previous occasion refused to authorise the creation of an AI Pope that would answer worshippers' questions, calling the technology "an empty, cold shell that will do great damage to what humanity is about." I also enjoyed when he called AI a threat to "human dignity, justice and labor." Hey, he even seems to like Pokemon.
