The message of Pope Leo XIV for the Vatican’s 2026 World Day of Social Communications, released on January 24, guides human beings into the muddy waters of a digital future where artificial intelligence makes our path treacherous.
In a document titled “Preserving Human Voices and Faces,” he neatly sums up the spiritual and material pitfalls of the technology and provides specific advice for “protecting ourselves … with courage, determination, and discernment.”
Here’s a checklist of concerns drawn from Pope Leo’s status report, a text translated and reported by the National Catholic Register:
Our Essential Nature
His first point is theological. “The face and voice are sacred,” he says, because humans are created in God’s image and likeness. God communicates to us about himself through the Word, “made known in the voice and face of Jesus.” We must guard these features in ourselves to preserve our role as God’s “interlocutor,” where each person “has an irreplaceable and unique vocation … that manifests itself precisely in communication with others.”
AI simulations of human voices and faces—and of our “wisdom and knowledge, awareness and responsibility, empathy and friendship”—interfere with our communication not only via “information ecosystems,” but at the deepest level of relationships.
Algorithms designed to maximize online engagement are already promoting emotional reactions and “penalizing” our efforts to understand and reflect, the pontiff warns. Bubbles of confirmation bias make us less likely to listen or think critically, thereby polarizing society. A naïve trust in AI as our “omniscient friend,” archive of memories, and manager of tasks can weaken our ability to think independently and creatively.
The Values of Civilization
If we’re unaware of our dignity, “digital technology can radically change some of the fundamental pillars of human civilization.” AI is increasing its control over the production of texts, music, and videos, threatening “a significant part of the human creative industry.” This risks making individuals “passive consumers of ill-conceived ideas, anonymous products, devoid of authorship and love.”
Pope Leo comments ironically that “the masterpieces of human genius in the fields of music, art, and literature are reduced to the role of a mere training ground for machines.”
We must stop to consider the constructive contributions we will be able to make with AI tools if we continue “growing in humanity and knowledge.” We’re easily tempted to let our tools make us lazy, but surrendering to a machine’s capabilities “means burying the talents we have received” and failing to deepen our “relationship with God and other people.”
The pontiff raises “serious concerns about oligopolistic control” of AI systems which can “even rewrite the history of humanity—including the history of the Church—often in such a way that we are not able to really realize it.”
Our Sense of Reality
“When we browse our feeds, the pope writes, “it becomes increasingly difficult for us to understand whether we are interacting with other people or with bots or virtual influencers.” Public debates and individual choices can be distorted by “opaque” digital forces which persuade us, simulating “excessively affected” personal relationships. These AI tendencies “violate and occupy the sphere of intimacy of people.”
Technology that bonds with us by cataloging our thoughts and building “a world of mirrors around us” turns the tables to suggest that everything is “created in our image and likeness,” Pope Leo points out. We fail to encounter other human beings on their terms, making friendships impossible.
Bias is inherent in AI tools because they are “shaped by the worldview of the people who create them, and they can, in turn, impose ways of thinking replicating stereotypes” and reflecting assumptions baked into the data consumed.
Behind the Scenes
The pontiff cautions, “Lack of transparency in algorithm design, coupled with inadequate social representation of data, leaves us trapped in networks that manipulate our thoughts and perpetuate and exacerbate existing social inequalities and injustices.”
Systems that use statistical probabilities to imitate knowledge “actually offer us at most approximate information,” sometimes seen as “hallucinations.” Sources go unverified, especially in the absence of journalists who are constantly gathering and checking facts first-hand. When it is “increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from fiction,” we suffer “growing feelings of mistrust, confusion, and uncertainty.”
Pope Leo steps back to say, “The challenge ahead is not to stop digital innovation, but to steer it, being aware of its ambivalent nature. Each of us should speak up in defense of individuals, so that these tools can be truly integrated by us as allies.”
What Can Be Done?
The second part of the World Communications Day message is devoted to “three pillars” of a wide-ranging alliance addressing humanity’s AI issues. To succeed, “no one can shirk their responsibility for the future we are building.”
Responsibility is the pope’s first theme, taking such forms as “honesty, transparency, courage, foresight, the obligation to share knowledge, and the right to information.”
Executives heading the various digital platforms must form business strategies that are driven not only by “maximizing profits, but also by a far-sighted vision that takes into account the common good—just as each of them cares about the well-being of their own children.”
AI developers must be “transparent and socially accountable with regard to the design principles and moderation systems underlying their algorithms,” thereby gaining the “informed consent” of users. National legislators and regulators must “ensure that human dignity is respected.” That means protecting individuals from emotional attachment to chatbots, preserving the integrity of information, and monitoring the power of simulations to mislead.
Media and communications companies must keep their “professional values”—aimed at “seeking the truth” with “a high standard of quality”—as a priority over selfish combat in the attention economy. They must retain public trust through “accuracy and transparency.” AI-generated or -manipulated content should be “clearly labeled and distinguished from human-created content,” with authorship and ownership rights respected.
Cooperation is the second pillar, meaning no sector controls AI on its own. The tech industry, policymakers, creative companies, academia, artists, journalists, and educators must work together to help build “an informed and responsible digital citizenship,” Pope Leo insists.
Education, in turn, must increase humanity’s capacity for critical thinking. This is the ability “to assess the credibility of the sources and possible interests behind the selection of information that reaches us, to understand the psychological mechanisms that trigger it, and to enable our families, communities, and associations to develop practical criteria for a healthier and more responsible culture of communication.”
The pope urgently calls for cultivating, at all educational levels, “literacy skills” to help the public use media, information, and artificial intelligence wisely.
“As Catholics, we can and must make our contribution so that people, especially young people, acquire critical thinking skills and grow in freedom of spirit,” says Pope Leo. “This literacy should also be integrated into wider lifelong learning initiatives because older people and marginalized members of society “often feel excluded and powerless in the face of rapid technological change.”
With this boosted awareness, fewer people will “succumb to the anthropomorphizing drift” of AI systems. The key is “to treat them as tools,” verifying information, and protecting privacy of data—such as “your own face and your voice”—to preclude harmful content, digital fraud, cyberbullying, and visually deceptive “deepfakes.” Consumers should heed security practices and speak up to raise any objections, keeping track of the changing models of an “AI-based economy.”
The pope concludes, “We need the face and voice to re-signify the person. We must safeguard the gift of communication as the deepest human truth toward which every technological innovation must be directed.”
World Communications Days
This message was released well in advance of May 17, the Sunday before Pentecost, when the Vatican will observe the World Day of Social Communications. It has become customary to post a preview of the text on January 24 every year because it is the feast day of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists.
This year brings the 60th observance of the Church’s set time to comment on the state of global media—an annual opportunity which Vatican II established in one of the council’s key documents, Inter Mirifica, the “Decree on the Media of Social Communication.”
Pope Leo XIV has addressed the topic of AI several times since his election to the papacy last year, but this is his first World Communications Day message. Last month, he spoke to a conference titled “Artificial Intelligence and Care of Our Common Home,” hosted at the Vatican. Pope Francis also voiced concerns about AI in World Communications Day messages and other venues.
Image from the Diocese of Armagh, Ireland. Click the Phronesis in Pieces navbar item“Papal Messages” to see coverage of World Communications Days back to 2018.
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