Pope Leo XIV said on Friday that algorithms lack the spark of humanity and called for the Catholic Church to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard what is human in the age of artificial intelligence.
The pope made the remarks during an audience at the Vatican Apostolic Palace with artists and curators participating in a meeting titled “The Art of Possibility: Weaving Together,” promoted by the Dicastery for Culture and Education.
In his address, Pope Leo said it has become urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce.
“In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce,” the pope said. “There is an ontological difference — even before an aesthetic one — between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others.”
“Algorithms lack the spark of the human, whereas authentic culture and art preserve this spark,” he continued.
For this reason, the pope said the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions.
“The Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions; an alliance for safeguarding what is human,” Pope Leo said.
The pope also posted the key passage from his address on the social media platform X, writing that the Church wants to renew this alliance “to safeguard our humanity”.
Art as a place of listening
Pope Leo framed the Church’s relationship with art as fundamentally about listening, not decoration.
“For the Church, art is never a mere accessory, but instead a fundamental place of listening — a space where one allows oneself to be instructed about humanity’s aspirations and wounds, its thirst for beauty, justice, and peace, and its search for meaning,” he said.
The pope invoked Saint Augustine’s testimony to “the restlessness of the human heart in search of truth,” saying that authentic art is animated by this same restlessness.
He also praised the motto of this year’s Vatican Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, “The Ear is the Eye of the Soul,” inspired by Saint Hildegard of Bingen. The pope said art acts like an antenna, picking up the great questions of the human heart and making them audible, visible, and shareable.
The Vatican’s Pavilion this year was installed in the women’s prison on the island of Giudecca, which Pope Francis had visited. Pope Leo said the project was not about bringing art into prison, but about allowing the prisoners to teach something about art.
Warning on homogenization
Pope Leo warned that the dangers of the digital age extend beyond censorship.
“We live in the age of search engines that offer us thousands of instantaneous answers,” he said. “Yet, no matter how powerful they may be, they merely return what already exists and tend to give us what we already want”.
“In the age of technology and consumerism, the great danger is not only censorship but also homogenization, and not merely imposed silence but the noise that makes it impossible to listen,” the pope continued.
He described art as a different kind of search engine.
“Art is a different kind of search engine. It does not proceed by indexing but by inquiry,” he said. “Indeed, its inquiry is a focused attention that is not satisfied with the mere sum of facts, for it never ceases to dig deeper, seeking the thread that unites them”.
Church needs artists
The pope echoed words spoken by Pope Saint Paul VI to artists in 1964.
“We need you. Our ministry needs your collaboration. For, as you know, our ministry is to preach and to make the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of the ineffable, of God, accessible and understandable — indeed, inspiring,” Pope Leo quoted from Paul VI’s homily.
“For my part, I also say to you today: the Church needs you,” Pope Leo added.
The pope concluded his address by assuring artists and curators that the Church regards them with esteem, gratitude, and hope.
“Know that the Church looks upon you with esteem, gratitude and hope; that she needs you, and that she wishes to walk alongside you, so that together we may safeguard the magnificent humanity entrusted to us,” he said.
Broader AI concerns
The address builds on Pope Leo’s broader warnings about artificial intelligence. In May 2026, he released his first encyclical, titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” focused on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.
In that document, the pope wrote that so-called artificial intelligences “do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean”.
“Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences,” he wrote.
The pope has also warned that artificial intelligence must serve human dignity, strengthen peace, and be guided by wisdom and charity.
The Vatican established a commission on AI to align church policies and work with the technology.
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