Pope Leo XIV identified AI as one of the main issues facing humanity, saying it poses challenges to defending human dignity, justice and labour
Pope Leo XIV laid out the vision of his papacy Saturday, identifying artificial intelligence as one of the most critical matters facing humanity and vowing to continue in some of the core priorities of Pope Francis.
In his first formal audience, Leo repeatedly cited Francis and the Argentine pope’s own 2013 mission statement, making clear a commitment to making the Catholic Church more inclusive, attentive to the faithful and a church that looks out for the “least and rejected.”
Leo, the first American pope, told the cardinals who elected him that he was fully committed to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernised the church.
He identified AI as one of the main issues facing humanity, saying it poses challenges to defending human dignity, justice and labour.
Leo referred to AI in explaining the choice of his name: His namesake, Pope Leo XIII, was pope from 1878 to 1903 and laid the foundation for modern Catholic social thought. He did so most famously with his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed workers’ rights and capitalism at the dawn of the industrial age. The late pope criticised both laissez-faire capitalism and state-centric socialism, giving shape to a distinctly Catholic vein of economic teaching.
In his remarks Saturday, Leo said he identified with his predecessor, who addressed the great social question of the day posed by the industrial revolution in the encyclical.
“In our own day, the church offers everyone the treasury of its social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor,” he said.
Toward the end of his pontificate, Francis became increasingly vocal about the threats to humanity posed by AI and called for an international treaty to regulate it.
He warned that such powerful technology risks turning human relations into mere algorithms. Francis brought his message to the Group of Seven industrialised nations when he addressed their summit last year, insisting AI must remain human-centric so that decisions about when to use weapons or even less-lethal tools always remain made by humans and not machines.
The late Argentine pope also used his 2024 annual peace message to call for an international treaty to ensure AI is developed and used ethically, arguing that a technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness is too perilous to develop unchecked.
In the speech, delivered in Italian in the Vatican’s synod hall – not the Apostolic Palace – Leo made repeated references to Francis and the mourning over his death. He held up Francis’ mission statement at the 2013 start of his pontificate, “The Joy of the Gospel,” as something of his own marching orders, suggesting he intends very much to continue in Francis’ priorities.
He cited Francis’ insistence on the missionary nature of the church and the need to make its leadership more collegial. He cited the need to pay attention to what the faithful say “especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, especially popular piety.” Again, referring to Francis’ 2013 mission statement, Leo cited the need for the church to express “loving care for the least and rejected” and engage in courageous dialogue with the contemporary world.
Greeted by a standing ovation as he entered, Leo read from his prepared text, only looking up occasionally. Even when he first appeared to the world on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday night, Leo read from a prepared text that he must have drafted sometime before his historic election or the hour or so after.
Prevost was accused of “disregarding allegations” of abuse against two priests in Peru, and has “a history of resisting disclosure of abuse information to the public”, according to the survivors’ organisation BishopAccountability.
Over the past two years, when he headed the Dicastery for Bishops, he oversaw cases of bishops accused of abuse and its cover-up, said Anne Barrett Doyle, a co-director of BishopAccountability. “He maintained the secrecy of that process, releasing no names and no data. Under his watch, no complicit bishop was stripped of his title.”
As Pope Leo, he must “win the trust of victims and their families”, she added.
According to the College of Cardinals report on him, Leo’s supporters “stress his innocence and say the cases have been inaccurately and unfairly reported in the media”. They insist he followed proper procedures in the case of two Peruvian priests accused of molesting girls.
The issue of sexual abuse and its cover-up is likely to dog Leo’s papacy as it did Francis’s. Although Francis came to a better understanding of the scale of the crisis in the church, survivors say he did not take enough concrete action and they will be watching Leo closely.
In recent years, Prevost has largely kept a low profile on the issues of sexuality and identity. In 2012, he expressed concern that western news media and popular culture promoted “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel”, specifically referencing the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children”.
Last year, he neither endorsed nor rejected blessings for same-sex couples, saying there were cultural differences across the globe, with some countries still criminalising same-sex relationships.
LGBT+ Catholics Westminster, a UK-based campaign group, said: “Opinions and ideas can change … He has expressed openness to marginalised groups, though his stance on specific issues remains ambiguous, including the concerns of LGBT+ Catholics.”
In October 2023, Prevost said that “clericalising women” – ordaining them – would not solve the church’s problems and might even create new ones. “The apostolic tradition is something that has been spelled out very clearly, especially if you want to talk about the question of women’s ordination to the priesthood,” he said.
But, he added: “I think there will be a continuing recognition of the fact that women can add a great deal to the life of the church on many different levels.” In 2022, he appointed three women to aid him in his job advising on the selection of bishops.
