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Pope Leo XIV walks in a procession as he arrives to preside over an evening prayer service at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome Jan. 25, 2026, concluding the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

We are not created for algorithms, but human encounter, Pope Leo says in programmatic message on AI


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OSV News Filed Under: News, Vatican, World News

Pope Leo XIV didn’t just write his first message as pontiff for World Communications Day Jan. 24. He wrote a programmatic document on artificial intelligence in response to the challenges of the modern world, just like Pope Leo XIII faced the industrial revolution more than a century before.

While the 60th World Communications Day will be observed on May 17, the text, published Jan. 24 on the feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of the Catholic press, offers a stark warning: AI and digital technologies are reshaping human communication, creativity and identity. And the greatest risks, the pope said, are not technical but deeply human.

If we fail in safeguarding and educating on how to use it, digital technology, Pope Leo said, “risks radically modifying some of the fundamental pillars of human civilization, which we sometimes take for granted.”

Pope Leo XIV begins his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican Jan. 21, 2026. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

By “simulating human voices and faces, wisdom and knowledge, awareness and responsibility, empathy and friendship, systems known as artificial intelligence not only interfere with information ecosystems, but also invade the deepest level of communication, that of relationships between human persons.”

The challenge, therefore, the pontiff said “is not technological, but anthropological. Safeguarding faces and voices ultimately means safeguarding ourselves.”

Pope Leo challenged AI with what technology cannot replace: a human face and a human voice, stressing that they matter. “They are described as unique expressions of a person’s identity and the foundation of genuine human encounter,” the pope said.

“They express one’s unrepeatable identity and are the constitutive element of every encounter,” Pope Leo said, adding that “face and voice are sacred” and were “given to us by God, who created us in his image and likeness, calling us to life with the Word that He himself addressed to us.”

God’s Word “first resounded through the centuries in the voices of the prophets and then became flesh in the fullness of time,” the pontiff reminded.

God “impressed upon the human face a reflection of divine love, so that humanity might fully live its own humanity through love,” Pope Leo said. Therefore, “To safeguard human faces and voices” means to “safeguard this seal, this indelible reflection of God’s love. We are not a species made up of biochemical algorithms, defined in advance. Each of us has an irreplaceable and inimitable vocation that emerges through life and is manifested precisely in communication with others.”

Pope Leo, in his message, challenged humanity addicted to social media and driven by algorithms to not give up one’s own thinking, empowering humans instead to use technology in order to assist, not drive, human life.

Algorithms, the pope warned, “reward quick emotions and instead penalize human expressions that require more time, such as the effort to understand and reflect.”

They close people into “bubbles of easy consensus and easy indignation” and “weaken the capacity for listening and critical thinking and increase social polarization.”

AI can provide support and assistance in managing communicative tasks, the pope indicated, in the long run however “avoiding the effort of one’s own thinking” erodes “our cognitive, emotional, and communicative capacities,” transforming people into “mere passive consumers of unthought thoughts, anonymous products, without authorship, without love — while the masterpieces of human genius in the fields of music, art, and literature are reduced to a mere training ground for machines.”

“Giving up the creative process and handing over one’s mental functions and imagination to machines” means “burying the talents we have received in order to grow as persons in relationship with God and with others. It means hiding our face and silencing our voice,” Pope Leo underlined.

This message was not the first time Leo has spoken strongly about AI. In June, he sent a message to the Second Annual Rome Conference on Artificial Intelligence, in which he voiced his “concern for children and young people, and the possible consequences of the use of AI on their intellectual and neurological development.” Our youth “must be helped, and not hindered, in their journey towards maturity and true responsibility,” Pope Leo stressed on June 17.

In November, he wrote to the Builders AI Forum, a worldwide conference in Rome, that their “deliberations over these two days illustrate that this work cannot be confined to research labs or investment portfolios. It must be a profoundly ecclesial endeavor.”

In his Jan. 24 message, however, he delivered a mission statement and a call to action, saying “Technology that exploits our need for relationships can not only have painful consequences for the destiny of individuals, but can also damage the social, cultural, and political fabric of societies.”

The challenge ahead of humanity “is not to stop digital innovation, but to guide it,” the pope said, “to be aware of its ambivalent nature. It is up to each of us to raise our voices in defense of the human person, so that these tools may truly be integrated by us as allies.”

This alliance is possible, the pontiff said, urging that it be founded on three pillars: “responsibility, cooperation, and education.”

With this, Pope Leo challenged AI moguls and Silicon Valley.

“For those at the top of online platforms, this means ensuring that their business strategies are not driven solely by the criterion of profit maximization, but also by a far-sighted vision that takes the common good into account, in the same way that each of them cares about the good of their own children.”

In November, as the conference “The Dignity of Children and Adolescents in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” was taking place, Pope Leo met Megan Garcia, an American mother whose son, Sewell Setzer III, died in February 2024 after an AI chatbot groomed him into suicide.

Garcia filed one of the first lawsuits out of many against an AI company after her son died in an ambulance after the chatbot encouraged him to take his own life.

In October, Character.AI announced it will bar users under 18 from its platform — a decision that took effect on Nov. 25.

Garcia told Rome Reports that she prayed during the conclave that the next pope would “recognize that the mission of the Church is threatened by unregulated AI.”

Garcia and other parents can be encouraged by the pope’s words in his Jan. 24 message.

“Creators and developers of AI models are called to transparency and social responsibility regarding the design principles and moderation systems underlying their algorithms and the models they develop, in order to foster informed consent on the part of users,” the pope wrote.

“The same responsibility is also demanded of national legislators and supranational regulators,” he stressed, naming their primary task as ensuring “respect for human dignity.”

“Adequate regulation can protect people from forming emotional bonds with chatbots and can curb the spread of false, manipulative, or misleading content, preserving the integrity of information against its deceptive simulation,” Pope Leo said.

Addressing media and communications companies, he said: “Public trust is earned through accuracy and transparency, not by chasing engagement at any price.”

Pope Leo wrote in his message that “Content generated or manipulated by AI must be clearly labeled and distinguished from content created by people,” urging safeguarding of the authorship and “sovereign ownership of the work of journalists.”

“A constructive and meaningful public service is not based on opacity, but on transparency of sources, inclusion of the parties involved, and a high standard of quality.”

And for that, no one is stripped from responsibility, the pontiff urged.

“All of us are called to cooperate. No single sector can face alone the challenge of guiding digital innovation and the governance of AI.”

All stakeholders, the pontiff said — “from the technology industry to legislators, from creative companies to the academic world, from artists and journalists to educators” must be involved “in building and making effective a conscious and responsible digital citizenship.”

“As Catholics, we can and must offer our contribution so that people — especially the young — acquire the capacity for critical thinking and grow in freedom of spirit,” he urged.

“Just as the industrial revolution required basic literacy to enable people to respond to novelty,” the digital revolution “requires digital literacy” — together with a humanistic and cultural education — “to understand how algorithms shape our perception of reality,” and “how AI biases function.”

Pope Leo specifically challenged Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” in his Jan. 24 message — who in 2025 were announced as “Architects of AI.”

“Behind this enormous invisible force that involves us all, there are only a handful of companies — those whose founders have recently been presented as the creators of the ‘Person of the Year 2025,'” Pope Leo said.

“This gives rise to serious concern regarding the oligopolistic control of algorithmic and artificial intelligence systems capable of subtly shaping behaviors and even rewriting human history — including the history of the Church — often without people being truly aware of it,” he warned.

In August, Pope Leo XIV was named to Time magazine’s “Time 100 AI” list for 2025, recognized as one of the world’s top “thinkers” shaping how humanity confronts artificial intelligence.

Time magazine said he has chosen a name “in part to meet a revolution: that of AI.” The list includes “leaders,” “innovators,” “shapers” and the group Pope Leo has been listed in — “thinkers.”

If Leo XIV continues to marshal the world’s Catholics against AI’s alienating potential, Time said, “Silicon Valley faces a formidable — and unexpected — spiritual counterweight.”

Pope Leo’s message for World Communications Day looks like a promise that the “thinker” will not disappoint.

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