AI Jesus: What’s left of Pope Francis’ guidance?

Dummodo me ames. Last month, I was in Salzburg. It’s a nice city, albeit with a tendency to monomania when it comes to classical composers. When I entered Saint Andrews' church on Mirabellplatz, an exhibition was on display, titled “Dummodo me ames” (Latin for “as long as you love me”), by Austrian artist Philipp Timischl. With OpenAI tools Sora and ChatGPT, he created hundreds of short, AI-generated videos depicting furry animals. Some videos were deliberately cute and funny (such as the racoon depicted below), some were distorted and weird.

The stated purpose of the show was to reflect on the act of creation, contrasting God’s with generative AI’s. Timischl told me that the public’s reaction was very positive. However, when I was there, I had the feeling that the videos only provoked giggling.

I believe that Timischl, who is not known for his theological acumen, pulled a prank. I found it distasteful, but you should not care about that. What is important is that the Catholic Church under Pope Francis was a powerhouse of guidance on how to use technology in general and AI in particular.

Antiqua et nova. Francis began his papacy by adopting Twitter and Instagram, but not Facebook, which was already too toxic. He reflected in the 2015 encyclical (a letter sent to all bishops) Laudato Si on the risks and possible benefits of social media. He went further in the 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti, calling social media an “illusion of communication.”

He moved his focus to Artificial Intelligence at about the same time. The Academy for Life, the Vatican’s bioethics think-tank, released the Rome Call for AI Ethics in February 2020. In speeches, Francis personally called for automated systems to be understandable. Accepting black boxes would foster apathy, he said. The Vatican published binding guidelines on AI in December 2024 (which only apply to the city-state). Francis' guidance was summarized in a note published in January 2025, Antiqua et nova (Latin for "old and new"), in which the Vatican lays out in very clear terms how AI should be used at work, in medicine or in the arts.

Errare humanum est. Steven Umbrello, a philosopher who specializes on AI, told me that Antiqua et nova was well received within the church. He pointed to large Catholic publications and bishops mentioning the note approvingly. At the diocesan level (the local church), the impact of Francis' guidance is harder to assess, he added. No institution keeps track of how the faithful use AI.

Indeed, Philipp Timischl, the creator of the Salzburg exhibition, told me he had never heard about any Vatican AI guidelines. And while the trend towards AI-scripted sermons, big in 2023, has abated, Dummodo me ames is not the only questionable use of AI on Catholic premises. Last year, St Peter’s chapel in Lucerne hosted an AI Jesus that communicated to visitors in a confessional (it did not take confessions, the organizers insist, despite media reporting to the contrary). And I guess online services offering “virtual priests with advanced AI souls” care little about papal doctrine. To err is human, after all.

Festina lente. Rome has a hard time converting good texts into good deeds − just like Brussels (while enforcing EU regulation). However, Alexander Filipović and Anna Puzio, ethicists at the universities of Vienna and Twente, respectively, told me that Antiqua et nova should not be understood as a binding regulation. Catholics do not blindly follow the pope on AI or on any issue.

Francis did not seek a quick fix for AI. Instead, he probably aimed at influencing lay decision-makers over the long term. Pope Leo, who took office in May, continued Francis' work when he called, in June, for an “ethical framework for the governance of AI.” Considering that some big names of Silicon Valley, such as US vice president JD Vance or far-right billionaire Peter Thiel profess to be close to Catholicism, perhaps the popes' messaging is geared more towards California than Salzburg.

This is an excerpt from the Automated Society newsletter, a bi-weekly round up of news in automated decision-making in Europe. Subscribe here.