February 19, 2026, Paul VI Audience Hall in Vatican City. Pope Leo XIV sat down with priests from the Roman diocese for forty-five minutes. Behind closed doors, no cameras, just dialogue between pastors.

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

The headlines were attention-grabbing, but most coverage stopped there. As if this were just another story of “old folks not understanding technology.”

It’s not like that at all.

Muscles Atrophy When Unused

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

He used a metaphor: “The muscles of the body, if you don’t use them, if you don’t move them, they die. The brain also needs to be used, our intelligence must also be exercised, so as not to lose this capacity.”

This isn’t about efficiency—it’s about maintaining ability. 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 training that makes you a pastor.

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

That process of “not understanding,” in retrospect, was the real learning. If ChatGPT had existed then, I probably would have just pasted text and asked “please summarize this paragraph,” then quickly moved on. Efficiency improved, but something in the soul would have disappeared.

This is what the Pope means by “atrophy.”

AI Cannot Share Human Faith

The second argument is more fundamental.

“True preaching is sharing faith,” the Pope said, “and artificial intelligence can never share faith.”

The weight of this statement can only be fully appreciated if you understand the Catholic definition of “homily.” A homily in Catholic liturgy 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, might have heard heartbreaking stories in the confessional, might have been suddenly struck by a passage of scripture during early morning prayer. These experiences constitute that unique voice when he steps up to the pulpit.

AI can analyze tens of thousands of homilies, find the best structure, most moving rhetoric, most suitable approach for that week’s readings. It can even write an impeccably excellent sermon. But what it cannot do is: witness.

Witness means: I have experienced this, so I can tell you. This is not information; this is existence. It is the pastor’s bodily suffering, spiritual struggle.

I now use AI daily for work—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 that article life is not something AI can provide me. It’s the path I’ve walked myself.

This is precisely the line the Pope is drawing.

Don’t Seek Likes on Social Media

In the same conversation, the Pope issued another warning: don’t chase likes and follower counts on social platforms like TikTok. He said this is 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.

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

He asks priests to leave the church, to build real friendships with young people through sports, art, and cultural activities. He emphasizes this requires “time and sacrifice,” because many young people live in isolation, trapped in the difficulties of 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 inequality, 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 in physical labor, but humans being replaced by AI in judgment, creativity, and even the ability to express faith.

In another interview, he rejected a proposal to create an “AI Pope avatar”—someone suggested using AI to create a virtual Pope so believers worldwide could have “online audiences.” He refused and warned: if technological development loses its relationship with faith and humanity, it becomes an “empty, cold shell” that harms human essence.

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

The Boundaries of Efficiency

I am someone who uses AI every day. I use AI to write code, do multilingual translation, gather information, run strategic analysis with 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 applicable scope. In information processing, pattern recognition, and process optimization, AI is not just useful—it’s crushingly useful. But when you encounter concepts like “witness,” “accompaniment,” “faith,” “friendship,” “love,” “loyalty,” efficiency logic fails. Not because these things are too outdated to keep up with the times, but because their value was never on the efficiency level 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: during those six hours, he spent time with God. The trace of that time spent will flow through his voice, his pauses, that imperfect but warm word he chooses.

The congregation can hear it.

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

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

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