Pope Leo XIV has warned that the use of new technology in modern warfare risks plunging humanity into a “spiral of annihilation” and condemned increased investment in weapons worldwide. Source: NCR Online.
“What is happening in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon and in Iran describes the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies,” the Pope said during a visit to the Sapienza University of Rome yesterday, urging vigilance over AI systems “so that they do not remove responsibility from human choices and do not worsen the tragic nature of conflicts”.
“Study, research and investments should go in the opposite direction,” he said. “They should be a radical yes to life, yes to innocent life, yes to young life, yes to the life of peoples who cry out for peace and justice.”
The Pope’s comments came just before he is expected to release his first encyclical – a major teaching document – on the ethical questions artificial intelligence poses for humanity.
Speaking in the university’s main lecture hall, Pope Leo decried the “enormous” growth in military spending worldwide and particularly in Europe, where defence spending grew by 14 per cent in 2025.
“Let us not call ‘defence’ a rearmament that increases tensions and insecurity, drains investments in education and health, contradicts trust in diplomacy and enriches elites who care nothing for the common good,” he said.
Addressing the students gathered in the auditorium, Leo noted how many young people are suffering as a result of the “extortion of expectations and the pressure to perform” present in modern society.
The idea that young people must remain trapped in their suffering, however, “is the pervasive lie of a distorted system which reduces people to numbers, aggravating competitiveness and abandoning us to spirals of anxiety”, he said.
“This very spiritual malaise of many young people reminds us that we are not the sum of what we have, nor matter randomly assembled in a mute cosmos,” the Pope said. “We are a desire, not an algorithm.”
FULL STORY
Pope Leo warns against AI in war, tells students they are ‘not an algorithm’ (By Justin McLellan, NCR Online)
