Pope Leo XIV cautions priests against using AI to write sermons
Whether artificial intelligence should play a role in creative and intellectual life is a debate that has taken hold across media, academia, and literature, and it has now reached the pulpit.
Pope Leo XIV has spoken out firmly against the use of AI in preparing homilies, arguing that the technology is fundamentally incapable of doing what a sermon is actually meant to do.
Faith cannot be automated
At a private gathering with several hundred priests from his Diocese of Rome, the Pope made clear that no AI application can transmit faith, and that transmitting faith is precisely the point. His remarks were not made publicly at the time, but Italian media subsequently reported on them after speaking with attendees.
To explain his unease about over-reliance on AI, Leo XIV reached for an analogy from sport: "All muscles die when we no longer use them, and that is why the brain must also be used, so that we do not lose our intelligence." The concern, in his view, is that delegating thought to machines carries the same risk of atrophy as an unused body.
On preaching specifically, he was direct: "Writing a real sermon means sharing faith with others. And that is the most important part. People want to perceive your faith, your experience of having lived and loved Christ and his message. That is something we must nurture every day." No algorithm, he implied, can stand in for that.
His caution comes as some within the Christian world have already gone considerably further. A Roman Catholic chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, concluded a two-month experiment in 2024 in which an AI avatar of Jesus, placed inside a confessional, answered questions from visitors on faith, morality and everyday struggles, drawing its responses from Scripture. Researchers and religious leaders jointly released findings from the installation, raising the question of whether believers would trust an artificial intelligence with their innermost thoughts and troubles. The experiment attracted widespread attention and showed that the boundary the Pope is now trying to hold is already being tested in practice.
The world has already moved on
However, the rest of the world has embraced AI-generated content at remarkable speed. According to Autofaceless, 71% of organizations now deploy generative AI in at least one function, with content creation topping the list. Arvow reports that 65% of media and publishing companies actively use AI to produce content, a figure that climbs to 73% in marketing. And according to Google, the results for media firms have been commercially significant: 66% report higher conversions, 63% improved lead generation, and 65% new products and services brought to market with the help of AI tools. Whether the Church will prove an exception to that tide is, for now, a matter of papal conviction.
image source: Edgar Beltrán, The Pillar, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons