Showing posts with label Pope Leo XIV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pope Leo XIV. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 02, 2026

Pope Leo on AI

Last night I looked through ENCYCLICAL LETTER MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIV ON SAFEGUARDING THE HUMAN PERSON IN THE TIME OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Full Text of ‘Magnifica Humanitas’: Read Pope Leo XIV’s First Encyclical| National Catholic Register  I do recommend it whether or not you are Catholic and whether or not you like this Pope. AI is mushrooming/exploding and will affect us no matter what the Pope, President or Prime Minister thinks or does. It's coming at us faster than anyone anticipated. And there are moral and spiritual implications. No other Christian institution has the power and authority to speak to the secular world. And in Christian parlance, "world" is the entity that constantly is opposing God's will, so who better to issue an Encyclical on the topic?
 
At first glance there are too many squishy words like discernment, process and transparency for my taste, and not to be too picky, but when was slavery abolished? There are probably over 50 million slaves in the world now, millions more than in the 18th century, so it seems a bit parochial to claim it was abolished. And I did stop long enough to read three paragraphs which proposed to explain "dignity" and was lulled to sleep. (51-53) The several paragraphs on the role of education made me wonder if Pope Leo knows in the U.S. education system basic biology is still a battle between our political parties.

By paragraph 184 he gets to the "therefore," one of St. Paul's favorite words.

Friday, May 09, 2025

The first American Pope, Leo XIV

Yesterday May 8 was a BIG day. UK and US celebrated the 80th anniversary of VE day (Victory in Europe) with a trade deal and the world has a new Pope, Leo XIV. Many are claiming victory, many on the fringes are rioting just because . . . and experts everywhere are left stunned and speechless. President Trump had been floating a tease about a "deal" but I think this unexpected appointment took some of the glitter off his big announcement. And this all happened on the day India and Pakistan conflict of many decades got much worse. India is now the country with the most population--over 1.4 billion.

I watched 2 interviews with his older brothers. Their shock was awesome. He will always be their "little brother." It seems from a small boy he'd wanted to be a priest. Since he's been in Peru for 40 years and is also a citizen there, I'm not sure how "American" he is by this time. Missing the 80s, 90s and the first quarter of the century means he's missed a lot of the chaos and disruption in our culture.

And also I found out 2025 is a Jubilee Year in the Catholic Church. This jubilee was announced by Pope John Paul II at the end of the 2000 Great Jubilee and is celebrated from Christmas Eve (24 December) 2024 to Epiphany (6 January) 2026, lasting a total of 379 days.
The theme for the 2025 Jubilee is "Pilgrims of Hope."


Leo XIV is the new Pope - Vatican News