Pope Leo XIV has issued a warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) at the start of his four-day visit to France.
The pontiff cautioned against ‘losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines’ in wide-ranging remarks to Church and state officials at the Élysée Palace, following an hour of talks with President Emmanuel Macron.
Leo made a similar warning earlier this year when he spoke of the need for AI to be ‘disarmed’ in the first major teaching document of his papacy.
In his May appeal, he mentioned the slave trade in relation to AI, suggesting that the world was in danger of normalising the exploitation of people once again.
The highpoint of Leo’s visit to France is set to be a giant Mass attended by more than half a million people in Paris today, for which an altar has been built on the Place de la Concorde and a large area around the Champs-Élysées sealed off by police.
Large crowds are expected throughout the trip, reflecting an enthusiasm that the Church attributes to growing spirituality among the French and other Europeans.
He was greeted at Orly airport earlier in the day yesterday by Macron, with the pair expected to deliver a speech later in the day in Metz.
Crowds were meanwhile gathering along a route to the Notre Dame, where the pontiff will later be driven in his popemobile.
The president will not be at any of the Pope’s Masses, largely to avoid breaching France’s strict separation of state and religion.
Macron hailed Pope Leo’s visit to France as a ‘great honour’, stressing that French secularism ‘in no way negates religion’.
Leo said that ‘authentic secularity’ should not exclude religion ‘from the public sphere or from education’.
In recent years, French politicians have often invoked France’s brand of secularism to justify bans on religious symbols, including Muslim women’s attire, in public spaces and schools.
The Champs-Élysées Mass will be attended by Macron’s wife Brigitte and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. Several candidates for next year’s presidential election are also due, including Marine Le Pen of the nationalist right, centrists Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, and conservative Bruno Retailleau.
There were reports of tensions between Macron and the Vatican team sent to make arrangements, with the president allegedly frustrated in his wish for a more ceremonial aspect to the visit.
This was dismissed this week by Élysée officials, who said it was customary to offer a visiting head of state – which the Pope is – a range of high-profile events, such as a cavalry escort down the Champs-Élysées. But they said it was never expected that the Pope would actually take the offer up.
Today France has secularised with the rest of Europe, and less than half of the population identifies as Catholic.
The number of regular worshippers has fallen from 35 per cent of the population in 1960 to less than 5pc today, while the number of priests has shrunk by two-thirds from 25,000 in 1990 to fewer than 9,000.
But in recent years there have been signs of a growing interest in religious tradition, with the number of adult baptisms more than doubling in five years to hit 10,000 in 2025.
“France has indeed secularised, but there is a void where God and values used to be,” said Cardinal François Bustillo, Bishop of Ajaccio.
“People are searching for something. Maybe they go to India or Tibet or the Amazon. And now the Pope comes here from Rome, bringing a reminder to people of their own roots.
“It was John-Paul II who awoke the East. Now Leo XIV will awake the West,” he said.
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