by Marie Symington
Roma – On Monday September 29 2025, the Dicastery for Communication announced the theme chosen by the Holy Father Leo XIV for the 60th World Communications Day: Preserving human voices and faces . In the face of the rapid expansion of AI technology along with the risks it entails, it is no wonder that the Catholic Church senses the urgency to respond to these potentially dangerous developments. This topic has evidently been on Pope Leo’s mind since the outset of his papacy, as his choice of papal name points to a deliberate parallel with the papacy of his predecessor Pope Leo XIII. Indeed, Leo XIV compared this “industrial revolution” in the age of AI to that during the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII, who “in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution”. Today, according to the present Pope Leo, the Church faces another industrial revolution “in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.”
The Holy Father has not shied away from expressing vigilance with regard to AI. During an interview with senior Cruz journalist, Elise Ann Allen, the Pope revealed that an authorisation to create an artificial version of him had been sought “so that anybody could sign onto this website and have a personal audience with the Pope”. Pope Leo adamantly refused the idea. He stressed the importance of organic human connection, explaining that “Our human life makes sense not because of artificial intelligence, but because of human beings and encounter, being with one another, creating relationships, and discovering in those human relationships also the presence of God. It’s going to be very difficult to discover the presence of God in AI. In human relationships, we can find at least signs of the presence of God” .
That does not mean to say that one should deny the value of technology in spreading the Gospel. The recently beatified Carlo Acutis used technology as a means to evangelise. In 2005, the young teenager developed a website to document the various Eucharistic miracles from around the world, convinced that the scientific evidence in favour of these miracles would call people back to the Catholic faith. Carlo Acutis is a great example of how technology should be used, that is, as a means to do good. However, one should be aware of the limits of AI and take note that it is simply a tool, a tool that cannot and never will replace human beings through which God works. As the Dicastery for Communication pointed out “while these tools offer efficiency and reach, they cannot replace the uniquely human capacities for empathy, ethics and moral responsibility. Public communication requires human judgment, not just data patterns. The challenge is to ensure that humanity remains the guiding agent. The future of communication must be one where machines serve as tools that connect and facilitate human lives, rather than erode the human voice” .
Some AI enthusiasts would argue that due to the rapid evolution of AI, it could become intelligent enough to explain Catholic doctrine and to respond to typical objections, by referring to Doctors of the Church, provided that it is programmed with the adequate data to do so. However, to understand the Church’s mission in spreading the Gospel as a matter of feeding information in the form of computed speech would be to bypass the meaning of the Gospel completely. Communicating the Truth is certainly essential to the Church’s mission, in that it brings people to God, but this must be done out of and through Love, for God is Love. God the Father manifested His Love for His creation by becoming incarnate in human flesh, as the Gospel of John reminds us: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” ; “God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” . One can learn from the Incarnation to better understand the mission of the Church.
Saved through Christ’s humanity
In his work Summa Theologiae, Saint Thomas Aquinas poses the question of the fitness of Incarnation: is it fitting for God to become incarnate and was it necessary for the restoration of the human race? Aquinas answers that “It would seem most fitting that by visible things the invisible things of God should be made known” . In other words, due to human nature being both body and spirit, Man acquires knowledge of the “invisible things of God” through what is visible. Thus, by incarnating Himself, God makes his Love for humanity manifest, serving as the perfect model for human beings to imitate in loving God and their neighbour. Indeed, as Aquinas notes, among other reasons listed, God’s Incarnation was necessary for Man “with regard to well-doing, in which He set us an example” .
Just as Jesus did not only proclaim the Truth but lived accordingly in Love, missionaries must spread the Gospel through both their words and their actions. For, as Aquinas points out in his work Summa Contra Gentiles, “nothing induces us to love any one so much as the experience of his love for us. Nor could God’s love for man have been more effectually demonstrated to man than by God’s willing to be united with man in unity of person: for this is just the property of love, to unite the lover with the loved” .
Proclaiming the Gospel through the dynamic of the Incarnation
God’s Incarnation was the most effective way to express His Love, highlighting the importance of the human voice and action in spreading the Word. God the Father did not stop at the stone tablets given to Moses to reveal Himself and his Law but made Himself incarnate among His children, just as Christians should not substitute in-person relationships with others for an AI robot to spread the Word. Relationships can only be formed between individuals, not with machines, and God’s Incarnation clearly demonstrates His desire to form a relationship with His creation. Indeed, as Aquinas writes “To promote familiar friendship then between man and God, it was expedient that God should become man, that while we know God in visible form, we may thereby be borne on to the love of His invisible perfections” .
An intelligence that knows neither how to love nor how to give thanks
Just as God sought a relationship of love and friendship through his Incarnation, Christians should seek love and friendship with their neighbours. Yet AI cannot love, it cannot bear witness to the Truth through its computed functions. God works through human beings to touch hearts, not AI, and if the latter serves to spread the Gospel, it is only to the extent that its use is governed by Man’s reason and good will.
Therefore, the preservation of human voices and faces is essential in the Church’s mission to spread the Good News, in that God’s Love is best expressed through our relationships with others, as the Incarnation demonstrates. Yet, moreover, it is worth noting that God incarnated Himself also “with regard to the full participation of the Divinity, which is the true bliss of man and end of human life; and this is bestowed upon us by Christ’s humanity” .
As Saint Athanasius said “[God] was made man that we might be made God” . For the same reason, God acts through human beings, as Aquinas puts it “this is not from the insufficiency of God’s power, but from the immensity of His goodness, whereby He has wished to communicate His likeness to creatures, not only in point of their being, but likewise in point of their being causes of other things” . Thus, the preservation of human voices and faces stands all the more necessary not only so that souls may be loved and saved, but also so that Christian missionaries may embrace God’s loving desire and purpose for them.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.