Pope Leo XIV opened his four-day visit to France by warning that a "paradise of machines" could erode humanity, and he urged artificial intelligence developers and the leaders who regulate them to slow down. In speeches in Paris on Friday, he also rejected nuclear deterrence and criticized France's newly adopted assisted-dying law in front of President Emmanuel Macron.
No pope had made an official state visit to France for 18 years before this trip, according to PBS News.
On Saturday, Leo celebrated an outdoor Mass at Place de la Concorde in Paris. The Vatican put the crowd at 700,000, with 600,000 registered ahead of time, CBS News reported. Benedict XVI's 2008 Mass at the Invalides drew 240,000, CBS reported.
Leo is due to travel to Lourdes and land Saturday evening. There he is scheduled to meet privately with seven survivors of sexual abuse, Euronews reported.
The scale of the harm is vast. From 1950 through 2020, clergy and members of religious orders abused an estimated 216,000 minors in France, according to a 2021 independent commission. Counting laypeople working in Church-linked institutions pushes that estimate to roughly 330,000.
1. Artificial intelligence must serve people
Friday's opening speeches went first to Macron and French officials at the Élysée Palace, then to diplomats and UN staff at UNESCO headquarters.
"If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a 'paradise of machines' invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment and the capacity to acknowledge the moral good," Leo said, as reported by PBS News.
He linked the technology to how societies value people. Computers are credited with intelligence, he said, while human lives are "judged according to the criterion of efficiency and, when deemed no longer productive, are rejected and discarded," PBS News reported.
At UNESCO, he said new technologies must stay at the service of the human person rather than turning into a tool of domination and injustice, Euronews reported. His first encyclical, which dealt with AI, called for strong regulation and for developers to put the common good ahead of profit, PBS reported.
Leo told reporters he hoped the Vatican's conversations with tech companies would continue. He said he believed many of those firms are open to making sure AI remains a tool for people rather than something that displaces humanity. PBS's account of his remarks names no company.
2. Nuclear deterrence fuels an arms race
Leo restated the Vatican's opposition to nuclear weapons, calling the doctrine of deterrence mistaken because, in his view, it only feeds a new arms race. "Peace is not a balance of power; rather, it is built day by day through dialogue and justice," he said, as reported by PBS News.
He also urged France to keep championing peace and cooperation between nations, Euronews reported. Macron, pointing to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, said France stands for peace, multilateralism, international law and the UN Charter. "Every life is worth the same, and all peoples must be defended," Macron said, according to Euronews.
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3. Assisted dying and surrogacy
At the Élysée, Leo criticized France's recently adopted assisted-death law and spoke against surrogacy, according to Euronews. He described the right to life as the base on which every other human right rests and reminded the country of its Christian roots.
France's Catholic hierarchy strongly opposed both the assisted-dying law and the 2024 move to write abortion rights into the constitution, PBS reported. The Élysée said climate and AI were the leading global issues in the two men's talks.
Secularism and a president's final months
"True secularism does not consist in excluding religion from the public space," Leo said, Euronews reported. Macron framed secularism as the arrangement that protects freedom of conscience, not a means of pushing religion out of society.
Staunch secularists objected to holding the Mass at the Concorde, arguing that the square stands for the Republic, CBS reported. Organizers said no other site in central Paris could hold the expected crowd.
Macron has seven months left in office and cannot run in the May elections. His approval ratings are near record lows, driven by anger over the cost of living, France's debt and deficit, and declining public services, according to PBS.
Charles Mercier, director of history and sociology of Catholicism studies at Paris's EPHE university, said in remarks reported by PBS News that a president near the end of his term may see value in standing beside the pope and sharing in some of his popularity.
What comes next
Close to 200,000 people are expected in Lourdes over two days, according to Euronews. On Sunday, Leo is scheduled to celebrate Mass there and meet bishops, residents and the faithful.
On Monday he is due in Metz for an interreligious meeting, a session on Europe's roots and a final Mass at Saint-Étienne Cathedral.