Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez wrote a Dec. 3 Angelus News column highlighting Pope Leo XIV’s vision for confronting artificial intelligence, warning that the Church must help shape the moral framework surrounding the technology’s explosive growth.
“Like many of you, I have been doing some homework trying to understand artificial intelligence (AI) and reflect on what it will mean for individuals, society, and the Church’s mission,” he wrote.
The archbishop described an accelerating technological landscape dominated by major corporations and ambitious government initiatives, alongside mounting public concern.
Archbishop Gomez then turns to Pope Leo XIV’s vision to AI, beginning with a warning from the Pope.
The archbishop notes that this summer in a message to an AI conference the Pope said, “Humanity is at a crossroads, facing the immense potential generated by the digital revolution driven by artificial intelligence.”
He emphasized that Leo XIV chose his papal name to evoke Pope Leo XIII, who confronted the upheavals of the industrial revolution.
In Archbishop Gomez’s telling, the Pope sees AI as a similarly epoch-defining challenge requiring clear moral guidance.He also emphasized that the Pontiff recognizes real promise in AI.
The Pope, he wrote, “sees the great potential that this technology holds for areas like medicine and health care, and the possibilities for increasing human connection and understanding and for spreading the Gospel.” At the same time, he warns that every technology reshapes the people who use it.
The archbishop quoted Pope Leo’s concern that “we currently interact with machines as if they were interlocutors, and thus become almost an extension of them.” The Pope cautions that such habits risk eroding “all that is truly human.”
Pope Leo has insisted that the Church must be involved in public debates about AI development. Archbishop Gomez agreed.
“The consequences of AI are too great to leave decisions about its development solely to Silicon Valley engineers, global tech corporations, politicians, and investors,” the archbishop wrote.
A recurring theme in Pope Leo’s early pontificate, Archbishop Gomez noted, is the need for strong ethical and legal protections.
“He believes we need ethical standards and legal safeguards to protect children and teens who are ‘particularly vulnerable to manipulation through AI algorithms that can influence their decisions and preferences,’” the archbishop added.
He also echoed the Pope’s warning to journalists about the rise of a “post-truth” culture shaped by opaque algorithmic systems.
He also devoted particular attention to Leo XIV’s firm rejection of transhumanist claims that AI might one day approach divinity or moral personhood.
“However powerful AI becomes in imitating human reasoning, it will never have a conscience or consciousness,” he quoted the pope as saying. Nor will it ever possess “a sense of human responsibility and authentic human relationships.”
Pope Leo’s broader philosophical caution was that access to information is not the same as wisdom, the archbishop noted, adding that the Pope says, “authentic wisdom has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life, than with the availability of data.”
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