February 19, 2026, Paul VI Audience Hall, Vatican. Pope Leo XIV sat down with Roman diocesan priests for a forty-five-minute conversation. Behind closed doors, no cameras, just dialogue between pastors.

A few days later, Vatican News released a report about the Pope’s discussion on AI usage, sparking heated international media coverage.

The headlines were catchy, but most reports stopped there. As if this were just another “old man doesn’t understand technology” story.

It’s not like that at all.

Unused Muscles Atrophy

The Pope’s first argument was remarkably down-to-earth.

He used an analogy: “If the muscles of the body are not used, if they don’t move, they die. The brain also needs to be used, and our intelligence must be exercised, otherwise we lose this ability.”

This isn’t about efficiency—it’s about maintaining capacity. Preparing a homily—reading scripture, repeatedly contemplating it, seeking connections in prayer, translating abstract theological concepts into language the congregation can understand—this process itself is a spiritual discipline. Skip this process, and you’re not just saving time; you’re skipping the very exercise that makes you a pastor.

During my seminary training, I spent the most time not on writing papers, but on the agony of “not understanding.” Reading Barth, reading Moltmann, reading theologians who made you feel stupid, then stopping at the parts you didn’t understand and asking yourself: What is he really saying? Does this align with my faith experience?

That “not understanding” process, in retrospect, was where the real learning happened. If ChatGPT had existed then, I probably would have pasted text into it asking “summarize this for me,” then quickly moved on. Efficiency improved, but something in the soul would have been lost.

This “atrophy” is what the Pope is talking about.

AI Cannot Share Human Faith

The second argument is more fundamental.

“True homilies are about sharing faith,” the Pope said, “and artificial intelligence can never share faith.”

To fully grasp the weight of this statement, you need to understand the Catholic definition of “homily.” In Catholic liturgy, a homily is not a “speech,” not “knowledge transmission,” not even “exhortation.” It is a pastor standing before the congregation, based on his own experience of encountering God, connecting the Word with present life.

The key phrase is “one’s own experience.”

A priest might have visited a dying parishioner that week, heard a heartbreaking story in the confessional, or been suddenly struck by a scripture passage during early morning prayer. These experiences form the unique voice he brings to the pulpit.

AI can analyze tens of thousands of homily texts, find optimal structures, the most moving rhetoric, the best angles for that week’s readings. It can even write an impeccable sermon that no one could fault. But what it cannot do is: bear witness.

Witness means: I have experienced this, so I can tell you. This isn’t information—this is existence. It’s the pastor’s bodily suffering, his soul’s struggles.

I use AI daily now—writing articles, doing analysis, managing projects, even developing various service models and tools. But I’m very clear about one thing: AI helps me with information-level work, not meaning-level work. When I write an article about faith, what gives the article life isn’t something AI can provide. It’s the path I’ve walked myself.

The Pope is drawing exactly this line.

Don’t Chase Likes on Social Media

In the same conversation, the Pope issued another warning: don’t chase likes and follower counts on platforms like TikTok. He called it an illusion of “thinking you’re offering yourself online.”

These two things—using AI to write homilies and chasing likes on social media—seem unrelated on the surface, but share the same underlying logic: surrendering the value of pastoral work to external metrics for definition.

AI helps you optimize homily quality metrics: complete structure, clear argumentation, precise word choice. Social algorithms help you optimize influence metrics: reach, engagement, follower growth. But the Pope asks: “People want to see your faith, your experience of encountering Jesus Christ.” This cannot be measured by any metric.

He asks priests to leave the church and build real friendships with young people through sports, arts, and cultural activities. He emphasizes this requires “time and sacrifice” because many young people live in isolation, trapped in drugs, crime, and violence. True accompaniment is low-frequency, high-cost, and difficult to scale.

This completely violates Silicon Valley logic. But the Pope doesn’t care.

From Leo XIII to Leo XIV: Between Two Industrial Revolutions

There’s a subtle context here.

In Leo XIV’s first address to the College of Cardinals after his election, he said he chose this name to honor Leo XIII. Leo XIII published the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891, the foundational document of Catholic social teaching, responding precisely to the labor exploitation, wealth disparity, and social division brought by the First Industrial Revolution.

One hundred thirty-five years later, Leo XIV faces another revolution. Not steam engines, but large language models. Not workers being replaced by machines for physical labor, but humans being replaced by AI for judgment, creativity, and even the capacity for faith expression.

In another interview, he refused a proposal to create an “AI Pope avatar”—someone suggested using AI to create a virtual pope allowing global faithful to have “online audiences.” He refused and warned that if technological development loses its relationship with faith and humanity, it becomes an “empty, cold shell” that damages human essence.

Note, his subject isn’t “AI,” but “technology disconnected from humanity.” This is a civilizational-level judgment, not fear of a particular tool.

The Boundaries of Efficiency

I’m someone who uses AI every day. I use AI to write code, do multilingual translation, gather information, and run strategic analysis through debate engines. I believe AI is the most powerful productivity tool of this era.

But precisely because of this, I better understand what the Pope is saying.

Efficiency logic has its scope of application. In information processing, pattern recognition, and process optimization, AI isn’t just useful—it’s crushingly useful. But when you encounter concepts like “witness,” “accompaniment,” “faith,” “friendship,” “love,” and “loyalty,” efficiency logic fails. Not because these things are too outdated to keep up with the times, but because their value was never in the dimension of efficiency to begin with.

A priest spending six hours preparing a homily versus AI producing one in six seconds—the difference isn’t in quality. The difference is: in those six hours, he spent time with God. The trace of that communion flows through his voice, his pauses, his choice of that imperfect but warm word.

The congregation can hear the difference.

This is the line the Pope draws. Not “AI is bad,” but “some things derive their value from you doing them personally.” Life’s friction and suffering are the source of meaning.

In this age when everything can be optimized, knowing what shouldn’t be optimized might be the most important wisdom.

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