Technology that didn’t exist just a few years ago is radically redefining our world — and Pope Leo is taking notice. He recently had some wise words about AI and social media for priests:
Pope Leo XIV has urged priests to not to use artificial intelligence to write their homilies or to seek “likes” on social media platforms like TikTok.
In a question-and-answer session with clergy from the Diocese of Rome, the pope said priests should resist “the temptation to prepare homilies with artificial intelligence.”
“Like all the muscles in the body, if we do not use them, if we do not move them, they die. The brain needs to be used, so our intelligence must also be exercised a little so as not to lose this capacity,” Leo said in the closed door meeting, according to a report by Vatican News on Feb. 20.
“To give a true homily is to share faith,” and artificial intelligence “will never be able to share faith,” the pope added.
Leo has expressed interest in the topic of artificial intelligence and the dignity of work since the first week of his pontificate, telling the College of Cardinals shortly after his election in May that he took his name in honor of Pope Leo XIII, who wrote the social encyclical Rerum Novarum in the context of the first industrial revolution.
“If we can offer a service that is inculturated in the place, in the parish where we are working,” the pope told the priests of the Diocese of Rome. “People want to see your faith, your experience of having known and loved Jesus Christ.”
In his meeting with the clergy of Rome, Pope Leo underlined that with a “life authentically rooted in the Lord,” one can offer something different, calling it “an illusion on the internet, on TikTok,” to think one is offering oneself and gaining ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ in that way.
“It is not you: if we are not transmitting the message of Jesus Christ, perhaps we are mistaken, and we must reflect very carefully and humbly about who we are and what we are doing,” the pope said.
He underlined that for a priest “a life of prayer” is fundamental, adding that this means “time spent with the Lord,” not “the routine of reciting the breviary as quickly as possible.”
The pope’s Feb. 19 closed-door dialogue with clergy of the Rome Diocese was introduced by Cardinal Baldo Reina, vicar general of Rome, who presented four priests — representing four age groups — who were selected to ask the pope a question.
Among them was a young priest ordained by Pope Leo in May. He asked how young priests can support their peers in today’s world.
The pope first urged them to keep their “eyes open” to the families from which many young people come from, which often have been through “very serious crises,” with absent parents or parents who are “divorced, remarried.”
There’s much more. Read it all.
