Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope Leo XIV, on ‘Standards for Discernment’ in Evaluating AI)

“We cannot condone naive enthusiasms, nor fuel unfounded fears. Instead, let us establish standards for discernment — the dignity of the human person, the universal destination of goods, the preferential option for the poor, care for our common home and peace — and let us translate these standards into practices.”—Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), https://www.vatican.va/, released May 15, 2026

In my post two weeks ago on Pope Leo’s apology for the Church’s stand on slavery over the centuries, I promised to discuss his much-anticipated encyclical, or formal papal pastoral letter, on artificial intelligence. That time has arrived.

When you consider the upcoming stakes for AI (one analyst I heard this past said it had greater potential to affect humanity than space exploration), there has been precious little time devoted to how to ensure it serves rather than degrades humanity.

By reminding tech lords, legislators, and ordinary citizens of that basic principle, Leo’s examination of this new force in our lives can potentially kick-start and even frame the debates that should be taking place now in the public square.

Fully cognizant of AI’s potential benefits, Leo is anything but a technological Cassandra. (Though predictably, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has turned up its nose at the pope’s urging to install brakes on the runaway technology, with op-ed contributor Louise Perry snidely asking, “Does the Pope Use Air Conditioning”?)

At the other end of the political spectrum, some have written that Leo has not gone far enough in denouncing the ills now becoming apparent in AI.

But his caution only enhances his case that this new technology cannot develop without safeguards that rest on human morality, and in particular on the Catholic Church’s notions on the market economy, technology, and social justice dating back to the groundbreaking encyclical of his predecessor and namesake Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (1891).

Leo XIV has called for measures ensure the dignity of work in the face of AI, including regulating private companies’ AI development and retraining workers whose jobs are threatened. He has also advocated for critical thinking education about the technology.

It’s not just the danger to livelihoods that concerns the Vatican, however, but also AI’s potential misuse for modern warfare:

“The growing ease with which autonomous weapons systems can be deployed makes war more ‘feasible’ and less subject to human control. This violates the principle that armed force should be used only as a last resort in cases of legitimate self-defense. For this reason, the development and use of AI in warfare must be subject to the most rigorous ethical constraints, to guarantee respect for human dignity and the sanctity of life and to avoid a race to develop such arms.”

In addition, the encyclical raises the alarm about transhumanism, or enhancing human beings through technologies, and posthumanism, which, imagines “a hybrid of human beings, machines and the environment.”

The ultimate impact of these two forces, according to the encyclical, could be to make it “easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable or less worthy…placing the burden on the most vulnerable in pursuit of a supposed optimization of the species.”

As Fordham Univ. papal expert David Gibson’s op-ed last month in The New York Times observed, Magnifica Humanitas has arrived at a “propitious moment,” when “The disruptions of the post-liberal world and the threats posed by A.I. have led many cultural conservatives to make economic justice a priority.”

Even President Trump, who early in his second term likened placing limits on high tech to restricting the growth of a baby, felt compelled to sign an executive order early this month calling for AI companies to voluntarily provide the federal government access to “covered frontier models” for a cybersecurity review up to 30 days before their planned release to “other trusted partners.” It came amid sudden alarm that some powerful AI models autonomously identify and exploit hidden vulnerabilities in real-world software.

It will be up to the tech barons whether they will enter into dialogue with the pope and other advocates for a more deliberate, regulated AI pace or if they will continue to proceed with no guardrails. But Leo has spelled out the moral stakes in no uncertain terms.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Gorman Beauchamp, on the Vatican Amid ‘A Veritable Tsunami of Apology’)

“We live amid a veritable tsunami of apology. The Catholic Church, which, of course, has much to apologize for, has, of late, offered mea culpas to Galileo, the Jews, the gypsies, Jan Hus, whom it burned at the stake in 1415, even to Constantinople (now Istanbul) for its sacking 800 years ago by the knights of the Fourth Crusade, an event for which the late John Paul II expressed ‘deep regret.’ No wonder that a group in England, claiming descent from the medieval Knights Templars, is asking the Vatican to apologize for the violent suppression of the order and for torturing to death its Grand Master Jacques de Molay in 1314, an apology timed to commemorate the 700th anniversary of that fell deed.”— American literary critic and scholar Gorman Beauchamp, “Apologies All Around,” The American Scholar, Autumn 2007

Almost lost in the hoopla over last week’s release of Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical about AI (which I will try to discuss sometime in the near future), was his apology for the Catholic Church’s role in legitimizing slavery and centuries-old slowness over condemning the practice.

A couple of days later, I came across Beauchamp’s appraisal of expressions of regret by major nations and institutions over past injustices. If he took in the pontiff’s more recent statement, I can’t imagine he regarded it with anything other than cynicism.

To some extent, Beauchamp’s outburst was understandable, as he wrote it when cries for reparations, most notably for slavery, began to gain steam in legislatures across the country. Still, there seemed something altogether too categorical with his concluding sour plea, “No more apologies.”

Within a couple of years, the Grouchy Gus persona adopted by Beauchamp spread through American conservative circles. Although Barack Obama never used any form of the words “apology” or “sorry,” his remarks to foreign countries about America’s past tangled history in his first term fed a myth that he had done so.

It all climaxed in Mitt Romney’s charge during his 2012 debates with the President that he had been on an “apology tour”—a phrase that Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in a different context, would have called “boob bait for the bubbas,” or tough-sounding rhetoric meant to turbo-charge populist hordes. It was not one of the shining moments of Romney's career, and one that I'm sure he would prefer that people forget.

During his first year at the Vatican, Pope Leo was extremely cautious, making some moves that helped mollify the Church’s right wing that had smarted over the more spontaneous Pope Francis (e.g., calling for “generous inclusion” of those attached to the Latin Mass). But I’m afraid that President Trump’s increasingly intemperate outbursts (including, this weekend, his third) about Leo have neutralized that effort toward internal unity.

One sign of the end of this era of good feeling came in Christopher Tremoglie’s essay a few days ago in the conservative Washington Examiner, which posited that the pope and other liberals should have saved their breath, because it was African chiefs, waging war on fellow rulers and selling as chattel to whites, who were really responsible for the African slave trade.

Leo is not engaging in the “woke culture” or “white guilt” that has led Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and other GOP politicians to interfere in how Americans learn about the greatest stain in our history.

Instead, experience—in dealing with emerging Third World countries considering their relationship to Catholicism, and in tracing mixed-race Black creoles on his mother’s side of the family—has taught Leo how complicated and wounding the Church’s attitude towards slavery has been over the centuries.

It started with ecclesial institutions owning slaves themselves in the Middle Ages, and continued with Renaissance popes legitimizing the quest of Spanish and Portuguese conquerors to subjugate and seize the lands of “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ" anywhere, according to Nicole Winfield's article for the National Catholic Reporter.

Africans now account for roughly 20% of the Church’s population worldwide. Moreover, it is growing rapidly not just in overall numbers but also, in contrast to what has been happening in the U.S. and Western Europe, in terms of seminarians, priests, and nuns.

For conservatives holding the line against any changes, if the Church hopes to retain its ban on clerical celibacy, it will have to import to the U.S. many of these African-trained religious personnel. And to appeal to these people entering the ranks of the religious, the church must own up to its past terrible mistakes related to the continent.

But another aspect of acknowledging past injustices, whether the Vatican’s or the West’s in general, is being lost. Formally admitting these mistakes not only has the potential to heal the wounded but to remind others why they would feel this way in the first place.

Slavery perpetrated over centuries, for instance, permeated virtually every aspect of culture and commerce over much of the world. Given that all-pervasive influence, nobody should imagine that it would not leave psychic stains on those it injured.

All the same, don’t be surprised if the pope’s right-wing critics begin to resurrect that “apology tour” bit. Only the next time, I want that “tour” to be comprised of Donald Trump and his supporters displaying proper penitence for denouncing a not-at-all-radical pontiff trying to speak plainly about the facts of history.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope Leo XIV, Warning Against ‘Other Securities’)

“Even today, there are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent.  Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure."—Pope Leo XIV, in his first Mass as pontiff, May 9, 2025, quoted by Deborah Castellano Lubov, “Pope Leo XIV to Cardinals: 'We Are to Bear Witness to Our Joyful Faith in Christ,'” Vatican News, May 9, 2025

Pope, Pentagon, and Imperial Impiety

So much chaos erupted on multiple fronts with the Trump Administration in the last 10 days that it’s easy to lose sight of the astonishing Free Press report that in January, Pentagon officials issued a veiled threat to the former papal nuncio that the Vatican had better side with the President on foreign-policy issues—or else.

This news item should concern all Americans, but especially Roman Catholics, one of the key electoral swing groups of the Trump era. (An estimated 56% of American Catholics voted for the President in 2024.)

Although it can be problematic to ascribe a single motive to a demographically diverse group like Catholics, GOP officials have surely been pleased that the church’s hierarchy emphasized so-called cultural issues like abortion and LBGTQ.

It encouraged voters to put in the background matters of relatively secondary interest to the archbishops, such as the rights of labor, economic justice, international peace, and humane treatment of immigrants—to say nothing of a return to power by the lone Presidential candidate since the Civil War to contest election results and foment a domestic insurrection.

I wish but don’t expect that archbishops and parish priests will use their sermons to address the disquieting report about the Pentagon meeting with the papal nuncio (a permanent diplomatic representative of the Holy See, in effect an ambassador).

Administration officials and voters still in their thrall have predictably dismissed it as—take your pick—“fake news,” “uncorroborated” or “highly exaggerated.”

Those terms cannot be applied to what has happened since Sunday, however, including:

*Trump’s remarks to a reporter that he was “not a big fan” of Pope Leo XIV, adding “He likes crime, I guess”;

*The President’s lengthy, deranged—and, of course, spectacularly self-centered—Truth Social post claiming, among other things, that Leo “wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump”;

*A later Truth Social post—equally demented, but this time blasphemous—depicting Trump as Jesus ministering to the sick (the image accompanying this post);

* A subsequent news conference in which the President ludicrously declared that this latter AI-generated meme didn’t show him as Jesus but as a doctor.

A confession here: I have never voted for Trump, and it would not be hard to find posts of mine that have criticized him. 

At the same time, accepting at face value any report that confirms one’s biases—including those that, like this one, cited anonymous sources— damages a writer’s credibility and persuasiveness. 

So, when I first heard the Pentagon meeting news in fragmentary form, I wanted to know how much, if any, of it could be validated.

My conclusion, after reading the initial Free Press story, follow-up accounts, and other reports on the principals involved, is that, while not all details are demonstrably true, enough are verifiable that they should prompt soul-searching among past and present Trump-leaning members of the American hierarchy and the faithful who followed their electoral cues.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni has issued a formal statement declaring that “the narrative offered by some media outlets about this meeting is completely untrue.”

“Completely untrue”? Not so fast. 

Possibly, despite what the Free Press article claimed, Pope Leo XIV had other reasons for not visiting America on July 4 than anger or fear over the threat. Even if he might now be reluctant to come while Trump is still President, he could be persuaded otherwise eventually.

In addition, the provenance of the publication may, in this case if few others, underscore the report’s credibility. 

The Free Press cannot be dismissed as a progressive news outlet like MS-NOW or CNN, given that it remains true to the editorial philosophy of co-founder Bari Weiss, who now runs CBS News. It has no motive for publishing a story in which the Trump administration appears bullying.

Moreover, the meeting did take place. While not characterizing the encounter’s tone, the Vatican Embassy, or apostolic nunciature, in Washington told Catholic news and information service OSV News, that the meeting occurred. In addition, there’s a picture of the then-nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, with Defense Undersecretary Elbridge Colby, issued by the Religion News Service, a credible outlet.

The Financial Times has an article about what seems to have happened:

An American present—not Colby—alluded to the Avignon papacy, infamous in European history as the site of a “Great Schism” between pontiffs who had returned to Rome and “anti-popes” who remained in France, subject to state pressure and corruption.

Other Americans at the meeting, who had hoped to smooth-talk Cardinal Pierre and the pope into taking a gentler tone toward the “Dunroe Doctrine” towards Latin America, were aghast over the effect of the remark. 

That’s why an initial anonymous Pentagon source, while deriding the report as “just absurd,” did admit the meeting included “a frank exchange of views”—a diplomatic euphemism for a tense or even storm encounter.

At this point the Vatican doesn’t want a nasty fight with Trump; hence, Bruni’s disclaimer that offers no further details about what did happen.

While the Vatican Embassy termed meetings with government officials as “standard practice” for the nuncio, neither it nor the Pentagon explained why the meeting occurred in the Defense rather than State Department.

Was it an accommodation to Colby, whose grandfather William, as CIA head and a Catholic, interacted with Rome extensively in the Cold War? Or was the venue an attempt at intimidation?

If the latter, it should come as no surprise. Trump has sought to bully the press, large law firms, universities, corporations, and other non-governmental institutions. 

Why should a major religion fall outside his reach—particularly since Trump whisperer Laura Loomer has derided Leo as a “woke Marxist” for interfering with Trump’s mass deportation program?

If the allusion to the Avignon papacy is true, it would conform to a pattern in authoritarian regimes: the thuggish initiatives taken by a midlevel flunky, sure that his bosses would approve his move or, if not, cover it up.

Though MAGA influencers expressed shock about Trump’s vile actions and language over the Easter weekend, there is little sign yet of a re-evaluation among his base. There should be.

In particular, when his Catholic supporters consider Pope Leo’s increasingly sharp, direct criticisms of the President’s trigger-happy tendencies, they should bear in mind that he is merely conveying the consensus of the 1965 Vatican II document, “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”:

“Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”

In an Atlantic Monthly essay published after remarks by Pope Leo last week, Francis X. Rocca confessed that, like many observers, he had mistakenly thought that, in comparison with Trump and even Pope Francis, Leo would be a “quiet” pontiff. But I’m not sure that Leo has stopped being “quiet” even now.

A ruthless authoritarian may prompt stances previously unthinkable under ordinary circumstances, as Thomas More, a government official who loved life, found no alternative to opposing Henry VIII. Extreme situations lead some to cowardice but others to courage.

What unites the Tudor-era saint and the American-born pontiff is an inner strength that seems confounding in a time of toadies.

More’s silent refusal to assent to Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn contrasted dramatically with courtiers and counselors who meekly went along, just as Leo’s steadfast opposition to Trump positions on immigration and national security diverges from the President’s allies within the American hierarchy (whose complicity with administration outrages I discussed in this post from last Christmas).

More of that is needed as the President breaches new moral boundaries. Will his followers take the lead of Leo, or follow Trump into ignominy?

The President’s actions over the last 10 days is forcing Catholic allies, within the administration and the American Church hierarchy, to choose sides.

J.D. Vance said the pope should stick to “morality” and not involve himself with “politics”—without explaining why a pontiff denouncing abortion is "moral" but one calling for peace is “political.”

On the other hand, Bishop Robert Barron, such an administration favorite that he’s a member of the Religious Liberty Commission established by the President, called the anti-Leo comments “entirely inappropriate and disrespectful” and urged him to apologize—a move that Trump predictably refused.

Before long, we may well find that whatever happened at the Pentagon in January is a mere dust-up compared with the unholy war that Trump now appears set on mounting against the Vatican.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope Leo XIV, Calling for ‘Hearts Attentive and Vigilant As We Await Jesus’)

“Let us be careful not to get caught up in frenetic activity in preparing for the feast, which would lead us to experience it in a superficial way and leave room for disappointment. Instead, let us take the time to make our hearts attentive and vigilant as we await Jesus, so that His loving presence may become the treasure of our lives and hearts forever.”— Pope Leo XIV quoted by Isabella H. de Carvalho, “Pope on Advent: Prepare for Christ's Coming, Don’t Get Lost in Frenetic Activity,” Vatican News, Dec. 17, 2025

Quote of the Day (P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, on the ‘Sheer Variety’ of Popes Throughout History)

“Seventy-eight [popes] have been declared saints as well as, oddly enough, two antipopes; eight have been pronounced ‘Blessed.’ There have been seventy-seven Roman popes, one hundred Italian, fourteen French, eleven Greek, six German, six Syrian, two Sardinian, two Spanish, two African, one English, one Dutch, one Portuguese, and one Polish. Fifteen have been monks, four friars, two laymen, and one a hermit. Four have abdicated, five have been imprisoned, four murdered, one openly assassinated, one deposed, and one subjected to a public flogging. One died of wounds he received in the midst of battle, and another after a ceiling collapsed and fell on him. The sheet variety of the ways they began and ended is riveting in itself."— Scottish historian P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, Chronicle of the Popes: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Papacy Over 2000 Years (1997)

Well, there is some limit to the variety of pontiffs, which you can see immediately in the accompanying composite photo: all aging white men.

Still, Maxwell-Stuart’s overall point is well-taken. Here are some updates on the helpful statistics above, as of yesterday:

*five popes have abdicated;

*83 have been declared saints;

*seven were German;

*one was Argentine;

*one is American.

Like his predecessors, Pope Leo XIV—the former Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost—will face immense challenges preaching the Gospel in a world increasingly hostile to its message of brotherhood, preserving the unity of the Church, and reaching out to other religions. He deserves our prayers, even as he prays for us.

One thing is for sure: he is likely to confound expectations, just as his predecessors back to and including Pope John XXIII did.