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New York Post
19-05-2025
- New York Post
Pope Leo XIV must guide church through dangers of AI
New Pope Leo XIV used one of his first public appearances to expound on a critical issue for our time: the dangers posed by artificial intelligence. Catholics familiar with the church's social teaching immediately made the connection to the last Pope Leo, whose encyclical 'Rerum Novarum' (Of New Things) provided a coherent, nonpolitical, thoroughly Catholic response to the social challenges presented by the industrial revolution. Leo XIII offered a response to radical economic and political ideologies, each of which denigrated the dignity of the human person. Simultaneously, the 19th-century Leo ushered in a revival of philosophical studies in the Catholic world, demonstrating that faith and reason are partners, not enemies. Advertisement The new pope chose the name Leo, in part, precisely because he believes the world is again in the middle of a major revolution, one caused by the rise of AI. I & robot Unlike the prior technological revolutions, AI poses more insidious, invisible threats hidden in unknowable algorithms that are, frankly, beyond the comprehension of most of us. AI is touted as ushering in the golden age of man. Yet a crucial element of this brave new algorithmic world is missing: us. Advertisement Like its predecessors, a main goal of the AI revolution is an increase in productivity. Where the industrial revolution physically denigrated humans through harsh working conditions or the elimination of traditional forms of labor leading to abject poverty, the AI revolution eliminates human beings altogether. You and I become nothing more than a series of data points assessed by impersonal and opaque algorithms used to manipulate our behavior. AI has already invaded our lives and is now busy changing not only our work and our world, but also our desires and our self-understanding. Some manipulations are subtle: Advertisements pop up while we consume social media. Advertisement Others are more sinister: Millions of innocent images of children are manipulated using AI to generate child pornography. The humanity The minds of children are being formed not by their parents or teachers, but by algorithmic formulas designed to capture and keep their attention, creating a neurological feedback loop that promotes addiction. These darker realities point toward the essence of Pope Leo XIV's true concerns. Algorithms that lack transparency are a danger to all humanity. Advertisement We must create safeguards against the authoritarian misuse of AI — mechanisms to prevent its exploitation for suppressing freedoms or undemocratically concentrating power. Biased and inconsistent AI systems perpetuate inequality and discrimination. In their drive to provide definitive answers, they strip away crucial nuances from complex societal questions. How might Pope Leo respond to these and other fears? He has already hinted at an answer: truth and freedom. AI challenges the fundamental truth of the uniqueness of every human being, turning us into commodities, just data points gathered from our spending habits and media consumption. We are created in the image and likeness of God and, therefore, each one of us is endowed with inalienable dignity. This truth drives social moral questions like abortion, reproductive technologies and euthanasia — as well as fundamental questions of how we act and interact with each other. Advertisement Pope Leo's concerns about AI, therefore, are not technological, but relate to its impact on how we understand ourselves and how we treat one another. The misuse of AI poses serious threats to safeguarding human dignity. Algorithms use data collected from our actions to manipulate us into thinking and acting in ways that do not reflect our truest nature. Hand in hand with truth comes authentic freedom. For Christians, this idea comes from Christ himself: 'The truth will set you free.' In the modern world, freedom is often presented as autonomy and self-determination. Authentic human freedom is rooted in the truth of who we are: created beings with limitations. Advertisement We are made for community. We all need the help, love and support of those around us. Digital dignity To turn AI into a tool for the common good, this Leo, like the one before him, must stand up and name the challenges to truth and freedom that this new revolution presents, and offer Gospel-based guidance to the world. Algorithms need to be transparent, so they can't be used to manipulate users by distorting the truth. AI tools must be designed to augment human abilities, not to replace them. Advertisement We should develop international standards to prevent the use of AI for undemocratic purposes. And all this can and must be done in service to our shared human dignity. Just as his predecessor did, this Pope Leo must insist that faith be an equal partner with reason in the conversations about how to develop, use and govern AI. Fr. John Paul Kimes is associate professor of the practice at the University of Notre Dame Law School and a fellow in canon law at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture who studies the ethics of AI with the American Security Foundation.
Euronews
18-05-2025
- Business
- Euronews
How will the Church of Leo XIV influence the world economy?
Numerous world leaders and more than 250,000 people will attend the inauguration ceremony of Pope Leo XIV, the first US Pope in the history of Catholicism, this Sunday. Thus will begin the new Leonine era that will officially bring to a close the pontificate of Pope Francis. Thanks to his choice of pontifical name and his mathematical and legal training, Pope Leo XIV has awakened hope and curiosity about the influences the Catholic Church could exert on the economic world during his pontificate, among the faithful but also in the more secular world. For many observers and experts on Vatican affairs, Leo XIV could bring doctrinal order to his predecessor Francis' outbursts against poverty, the result of social injustice and environmental devastation. As the Holy Father said in his first address to the College of Cardinals on Saturday 10 May: "I thought of taking the name of Leo XIV for several reasons, however, principally because of Pope Leo XIII, who, with his historic encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution," The encyclical Rerum Novarum (Of New Things) was promulgated by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. It is regarded by historians as the Church's first step into modernity. With Rerum Novarum, the Church called for rights for workers without resorting to the class struggle promoted by Marxist doctrine, but through the balance of fair wages and equal economic relations. Rerum Novarum laid the foundations of the Social Doctrine of the Church that inspired Catholic trade unionism and some thirty years later the creation of the Christian Democratic parties that contributed decisively to the civil and material reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War. For Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, banker and former president of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) the great Vatican financial institution, Leo XIII was "a prophetic pope" because the debate on the preparation of the new encyclical, which had begun a few years earlier, conditioned the ideas of the economic powers of the Belle Époque, especially the young United States in full growth. Gotti Tedeschi adds: "Pope Leo XIII questioned the concentrations of economic industrial power and was immediately attacked (by the political and religious sectors that supported a nascent and unregulated capitalism) but after six months the United States passed the Sherman Act on monopolies and elaborated the basis of antitrust agencies to regulate competition". The Sherman Act was passed by the US administration in 1890 to curb the power of cartels that had created a near-monopoly regime with serious social repercussions. "Today the Church offers to all its patrimony of social doctrine to respond to another industrial revolution and to developments in artificial intelligence that bring new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and work," the new pope reminded the Cardinals in his recent address. The European Union and the public authorities of our time are measured against the dominant positions of the large American technological companies, the so-called Big-Tech, while economic data show growing economic crises and imbalances between average incomes and the cost of living on opposite sides of the Atlantic. If the question of a new Social Doctrine of the Church has been clarified by the words of the Pontiff himself, it is still unclear how the new Pope will launch the evangelising action necessary to persuade the main economic and political players of the value of the contents of a new encyclical on the social duties of capital. Will the new pontiff have to confront the great oligarchs as the Church Fathers did with pagan princes and rulers in the first centuries of Christianity? For Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, "evangelisation in the world of finance that seems so indifferent or even needs to have certain values explained to it. We need to reread Benedict XVI's Caritas in Veritate, the encyclical of globalisation and technological progress", drafted and amended during the debt crisis that shook Europe and the United States between 2008 and the early 2010s, the worst financial collapse since the Wall Street crash of 1929. Ettore Gotti Tedeschi co-authored Caritas in Veritate with Benedict XVI. Through this encyclical, Benedict XVI emphasised the importance of defining what the economy is and what its ultimate goals are with a profound revision of the development models imposed by globalisation and digitalisation. This work was continued and reinterpreted by Pope Francis, who in addition to his fighting against economic injustice also engaged in the study of Artificial Intelligence. In 2024, he gave a speech at the G7 Intergovernmental Forum in Italy where he said "artificial intelligence is a product of human creative potential, a gift from God". And he spoke of 'algoethics', the morality of the algorithm. "Pope Francis' priority on artificial intelligence is that technology be understood for its social impact, since it represents a form of power that redefines relations between people," Paolo Benanti, a Franciscan, a scholar of the Ethics of Technology and professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University, told Wired magazine a few months ago. Father Benanti was considered to be Pope Francis' contact person for AI and is the only Italian member of the United Nations' Committee on Artificial Intelligence, as well as chairman of the Commission on Artificial Intelligence for Information of the Department for Information and Publishing of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. Leo XIV is the first US Pope in the thousand-year history of the Church. In the Holy See, his election has awakened hopes that the new Pope can help fix the Vatican's strained finances by attracting new flows of dollars. St Peter's obolus is historically the financial lung of the Catholic Church, representing the flow of money from all the world's alms. "Fifty per cent of St Peter's obolus traditionally came from the United States. From what I have read, St Peter's obolus has plummeted to about 50 per cent in the last decade. What can Leo do? Set about revangelising and reaffirming the truths that influence the Catholic world. In six months he will balance the budget, says Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who concludes by saying that US Vice-President JD Vance affirmed those truths and laid down his conditions in Munich last February, saying 'reconfirm the values and we will be totally on your side'. Pope Leo XIV for the time being seems to have sent messages of a certain social sensibility from an economic point of view, and at the same time more traditional from the point of view of aesthetic or symbolic presence and the content of doctrinal values. *** In 2012, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was removed from the presidency of the IOR on charges of allegedly violating anti-money laundering laws. In 2014, the GIP of the Court of Rome ruled out Gotti Tedeschi's responsibility, dismissing the former Vatican banker stated that the judicial misadventure was linked to his attempts to make the Institute for Religious Works more transparent.***
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Here's why the pope chose Leo XIV as his name. And it's got a Miami connection
Immediately after his election as pope, the Villanova University alumnus and dual citizen (of Peru and the United States) Robert Francis Prevost made clear why he chose to be called Leo XIV. He is following in the footsteps of Pope Leo XIII, head of the Catholic Church from 1878 until 1903. His encyclical 'Rerum Novarum' (Latin for 'Of New Things') signaled to 19th-century Europe — and to the world — that the Catholic Church was aligned with the working class. This was not just a novel idea; it was earth-shaking in its implications. Henceforth, the notion that monopolies could extract the last ounce of sweat from a worker based solely on his 'marginal contribution' to a company's output would be viewed as unethical. Instead, 'Rerum Novarum' advanced the idea that compensation should reflect the 'average contribution' of all workers — a principle that laid the moral groundwork for collective bargaining and, eventually, the modern labor movement in the United States. That movement, grounded in the Church's social doctrine, reached a political and cultural crescendo under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As described by Jonathan Alter in 'The Defining Moment,' Roosevelt's close friend Ed Flynn (not Ed Walsh) once handed him a copy of 'Rerum Novarum,' urging him to study its message on social justice. Roosevelt took the lesson to heart. It helped shape his thinking in what would become his iconic 1941 'Four Freedoms' speech, later brought to life in paintings by Norman Rockwell. The timing was critical. The Soviet Union was claiming to offer a 'workers' paradise,' which, as history showed, evolved into a workers' nightmare. Roosevelt believed the West needed its own compelling vision of justice and dignity — one rooted in democracy and in values shared by Catholic social teaching. FDR's fourth freedom — freedom from want — was particularly influenced by this thinking. Until then, rights were mostly defined in negative terms (freedom from fear, freedom from oppression). Roosevelt reframed them to include positive rights: a decent standard of living, economic security and dignity in work. Catholic social doctrine also has a connection to Miami. Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon, writing in the Harvard Human Rights Journal, noted how Latin American delegates to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights brought Catholic social teaching into the text. In her article, 'The Forgotten Crucible: The Latin American Influence on the Universal Human Rights Idea,' she highlights figures like Guy Pérez-Cisneros of Cuba and Émile Saint-Lot of Haiti, who advocated for language rooted in the Church's teachings on dignity and justice. Pérez-Cisneros's son, Pablo, was married to my wife's cousin. When the United Nations celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration in 2008, Glendon — then U.S. ambassador to the Vatican — invited him to speak. I had the privilege of helping him draft his remarks. I made sure to include the emphasis his father had placed on intellectual property rights in the early drafts, and I insisted on citing the 'prior' right of parents to choose their children's education — language that appears both in 'Pacem in Terris' ('Peace on Earth'), the 1963 encyclical by Pope John XXIII, and in the Universal Declaration itself. I suspect Leo XIV is steeped in both the rights of workers and the rights of parents. Xavier Suarez is a former mayor of Miami and a former Miami-Dade County commissioner.
Miami Herald
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Here's why the pope chose Leo XIV as his name. And it's got a Miami connection
Immediately after his election as pope, the Villanova University alumnus and dual citizen (of Peru and the United States) Robert Francis Prevost made clear why he chose to be called Leo XIV. He is following in the footsteps of Pope Leo XIII, head of the Catholic Church from 1878 until 1903. His encyclical 'Rerum Novarum' (Latin for 'Of New Things') signaled to 19th-century Europe — and to the world — that the Catholic Church was aligned with the working class. This was not just a novel idea; it was earth-shaking in its implications. Henceforth, the notion that monopolies could extract the last ounce of sweat from a worker based solely on his 'marginal contribution' to a company's output would be viewed as unethical. Instead, 'Rerum Novarum' advanced the idea that compensation should reflect the 'average contribution' of all workers — a principle that laid the moral groundwork for collective bargaining and, eventually, the modern labor movement in the United States. That movement, grounded in the Church's social doctrine, reached a political and cultural crescendo under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As described by Jonathan Alter in 'The Defining Moment,' Roosevelt's close friend Ed Flynn (not Ed Walsh) once handed him a copy of 'Rerum Novarum,' urging him to study its message on social justice. Roosevelt took the lesson to heart. It helped shape his thinking in what would become his iconic 1941 'Four Freedoms' speech, later brought to life in paintings by Norman Rockwell. The timing was critical. The Soviet Union was claiming to offer a 'workers' paradise,' which, as history showed, evolved into a workers' nightmare. Roosevelt believed the West needed its own compelling vision of justice and dignity — one rooted in democracy and in values shared by Catholic social teaching. FDR's fourth freedom — freedom from want — was particularly influenced by this thinking. Until then, rights were mostly defined in negative terms (freedom from fear, freedom from oppression). Roosevelt reframed them to include positive rights: a decent standard of living, economic security and dignity in work. Catholic social doctrine also has a connection to Miami. Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon, writing in the Harvard Human Rights Journal, noted how Latin American delegates to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights brought Catholic social teaching into the text. In her article, 'The Forgotten Crucible: The Latin American Influence on the Universal Human Rights Idea,' she highlights figures like Guy Pérez-Cisneros of Cuba and Émile Saint-Lot of Haiti, who advocated for language rooted in the Church's teachings on dignity and justice. Pérez-Cisneros's son, Pablo, was married to my wife's cousin. When the United Nations celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration in 2008, Glendon — then U.S. ambassador to the Vatican — invited him to speak. I had the privilege of helping him draft his remarks. I made sure to include the emphasis his father had placed on intellectual property rights in the early drafts, and I insisted on citing the 'prior' right of parents to choose their children's education — language that appears both in 'Pacem in Terris' ('Peace on Earth'), the 1963 encyclical by Pope John XXIII, and in the Universal Declaration itself. I suspect Leo XIV is steeped in both the rights of workers and the rights of parents. Xavier Suarez is a former mayor of Miami and a former Miami-Dade County commissioner.
International Business Times
09-05-2025
- General
- International Business Times
Pope Leo XIV: Here is Why Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost Chose This Papal Name
Pope Leo XIV is the new leader of the Catholic Church, who will lead 1.4 million Catholics worldwide. Although popes are not obliged to change their names, every pontiff has done this for the past 470 years. The chosen catholic leader often opts for the name of a predecessor to signal their intentions and honor the past leader. Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost chose Pope Leo XIV as his papal name. Here is a brief history of the papal name Leo and how it could impact the future decision of the newly appointed Pope, Leo XIV. Leo is the fifth most famous name chosen by the popes. According to the Holy See director, this name directly refers to Pope Leo XIII. He headed the Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903 and was known as a founding figure in the Catholic social justice tradition. Pope Leo XIII was popular among his followers for the encyclical "Rerum Novarum" (Meaning - Of New Things). The Holy See director said he was considered the foundation for the modern social doctrine of the church. "The papal name Leo unsurprisingly shows a Pope who is going to be strong during a time of crisis, historically. It seems likely to be a continuation of Francis's liberalisation," the Independent quoted Catholic priest and blogger Ed Tomlinson. Here is Why Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost Chose This Papal Name The ancient tradition of choosing a papal name began in the sixth century when Roman-born Mercurius refused to rule under the name honouring a pagan god and chose John II. The tradition became customary in the 11th century and evolved as a symbolic act. "Looking to history, Leos were a strong popes. Like Leo XIII, he loved his people. He loved his people. His people, he considered man not a machine. A man's work was a reflection of his dignity. We don't know this yet, but it'd be interesting to know why he took the name Leo," ABC News quoted Father Vito Crincoli. Pope Leo's in History The first pope to choose Leo as the papal name was Leo the Great, who served the Catholic Church from 440 to 461. He was known as a Doctor of the Church after standing for orthodox teachings during the time of theological and political upheaval. Pope Leo II, who led the Catholic Church for a year from 682, was as popular among his followers as an eloquent preacher and a gentle soul. Leo III became famous during his tenure from 795 to 816 for crowning Charlemagne as Emperor, launching the Holy Roman Empire. Leo IV united Italian cities and rebuilt churches destroyed by Arab raiders. He was known as the papal builder and defender, and for protecting the Vatican by erecting the mighty Leonine Wall. Leo V's reign ended two months after he took charge because of betrayal. Leo VI became the leader of the Catholic Church during chaotic times. During his leadership, he urged Christians to fight against Arab raiders, banned castrati from marrying, and sent bishops to their dioceses. Leo VII appointed a German archbishop to reform the church after helping broker peace between King Hugh of Italy and Alberic through an arranged marriage. Pope Leo VIII was known as an antipope during the first part of his reign and the legitimate pope during the second period. Leo IX captured the attention of Catholics worldwide for his stand on papal authority. His bold stance led to a split between Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches. Leo X faced four issues during his reign: the Lutheran Reformation, political ambitions to dominate Italy, building programs to build Rome into a great city, and unsuccessful efforts to reform the church during the Fifth Lateran Council. Leo XI was described as the Lightning Pope because he was the Catholic Church's leader for 26 days. Leo XII ruled during the turbulent times and became known as the conservative pope.
