Pope Leo presides over mass at Vatican City, 29 June 2026. Photograph: Maria Grazia Picciarella/Shutterstock
Simon Tisdall: "Leo is not just talk. He has a plan. Presiding over a “consistory”
– a rare gathering of all the Catholic church’s cardinals – in Rome
last weekend, he sought to tighten up the just-war theory of St
Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas that is frequently hijacked to
legitimise so-called preventive wars of choice. Leo argues war is only
morally justified for “proportional self-defence”, and only after all
peaceful options are exhausted. “War is never worthy of humanity, and it
is never blessed by God,” he told the cardinals. “War is not merely a conflict between states”, but originates in “a culture of power”. The world must “rebuild a culture of cooperation”.
This struggle for the soul of today’s newly adversarial world order has drawn in Islamic and Jewish
religious leaders and thinkers as well as other Christian
denominations. Sarah Mullally, the newly enthroned archbishop of
Canterbury, defiantly urged “faithful resistance”
to Israel’s expanding occupation when meeting Palestinian Christians in
the West Bank last month. The international community had a “moral
responsibility” to relieve profound suffering there and in Gaza, she
wrote in a pastoral letter – and the time to act was now. Middle East
conflicts were “symptomatic of a deeper political and spiritual crisis –
an abandonment of international law and an increasing recurrence of military force”.
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The immorality of world leaders is contagious. Thank heavens for the pope
Do
you remember the early 2000s, when Silicon Valley buzzed with idealism
and tech bros told us they were going to save the world? “Don’t be evil”
was Google’s unofficial motto; it’s 2004 IPO prospectus
declared that doing “good things for the world” was more important than
“short term gains”. Mark Zuckerberg similarly wrote in Facebook’s 2012 IPO letter that the social network was “built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected”.
As
was obvious to anyone paying attention, this was all performative
bullshit. Nevertheless, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic about that
period of time – which came to a definitive end in 2018, with the Cambridge Analytica
scandal. By and large, billionaires and CEOs still cared what the hoi
polloi thought of them. They were self-aware enough to realize that,
even with all their billions, there’s a lot more of us than there are of
them.
Now,
however, there has been a seismic vibe shift. Donald Trump has made
cruelty cool, and normalized greed and corruption. Tech titans,
meanwhile, have lined up to kiss the ring
– and extract as much money from his administration as they can. Elon
Musk has gone from quirky rocketman to rightwing agitator. Zuckerberg is
in his macho era, urging companies to unleash their “masculine energy”
and saying he regrets apologizing so much in the past.
As for the mantra “don’t be evil”? Ha. Now tech companies are unapologetically fueling unimaginable evil. Project Nimbus, for example, a $1.2bn contract awarded by Israel to Google and Amazon, has been accused of playing a role
in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder,
meanwhile, has said using the term genocide in connection to Gaza, which
scores of leading human rights organizations and scholars do, is “offensive”.
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Vatican announces theme for 2026 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation
The Dicastery for Promoting
Integral Human Development announces the theme chosen by Pope Leo XIV
for the 2026 celebration of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of
Creation, held on September 1, as "They shall beat their swords into
plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Is 2:4).
By Deborah Castellano Lubov
Pope Leo XIV has chosen “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Is
2:4) as the theme for the 2026 edition of the World Day of Prayer for
the Care of Creation, traditionally celebrated on September 1.
In the statement from the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human
Development making the announcement, the Dicastery states that the Holy
Father’s Message for the Day highlights the connection between armed
conflict and environmental degradation.
Such degradation, it underscored, constitutes both a serious
violation of our duty to care for creation, as well as a long-term
threat to the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
Moreover, it said "the now widespread awareness of the impact of war
on natural resources has not led to the creation of adequate
institutions or to responsible decisions aimed at preventing conflicts
and resolving disputes peacefully."
Finally, the statement concluded that the title, the passage in which
the Prophet Isaiah prophesies the transformation of weapons into
agricultural tools, "is an explicit invitation to prioritize development
and sustainability over violence and destruction."
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Our tech overlords are planning for conscious AI to conquer the cosmos. What could go wrong?
A new belief set is uniting some of the wealthiest men in the world around a ‘transhuman’ future – actual humanity be damned
Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, took to the Internet a few years ago to propose
that homo sapiens would be the first species “to design our own
descendants”. In his best case scenario, the “merge” between humans and
artificial intelligence occurs at some point over the next 50 years. The
alternative, where we remain simply human and the machines follow their
own path, is more ominous. “If two different species both want the same
thing and only one can have it – in this case, to be the dominant
species on the planet and beyond – they are going to have conflict,” he
wrote.
More
recently, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who at one point last year
was granted the power to reconfigure the US federal government, argued on his social media platform, X,
that “it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader
for digital superintelligence” – our role in the history of the cosmos
reduced to that of the low level code that boots up a computer before
you can run sophisticated programs on it.
And Musk is on the tame side of the evolutionary proposition. According to Silicon Valley lore,
he once pushed back against Google co-founder Larry Page’s claim that
our next manifestation, to follow in the steps of the meat-and-bone
humans you see walking about today, would necessarily have digital form
in order to spread throughout the galaxy. (In fact, he recently
testified in court that it was those concerns that prompted him to found
OpenAI with Altman.)Meat and bones do not make for efficient interstellar travelers.
It would be a mistake
to understand these weird worldviews as an ultimately harmless take by
techies who grew up on a diet of dystopian science fiction. The notion
that we are approaching the end of the homo sapiens, as defined since
Darwin’s day, is coalescing into a durable body of belief among the
elites at the helm of our technological future.
Their
dreams are not all perfectly aligned. But like the folk stories and
superstitions that have for ever revolved around more established
religious traditions, the collection of far-fetched scenarios valley
oligarchs are writing into our future exhibits the hallmarks of a
religion in the making, a body of belief to confer a sense of cosmic
transcendence and inevitability to their hi-tech project.... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/may/31/transhuman-silicon-valley-ai
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Pope Leo XIV speaks
during a meeting with bishops, members of the clergy and families whose
members have been victims of environmental pollution at the Cathedral of
Santa Maria Assunta, in Acerra, Italy, on 23 May 2026. Photograph: Ciro De Luca/Reuters
Americans echo Pope Leo’s concerns about AI: ‘It threatens workers, privacy and human life’
Guardian
readers in the US spoke of fears about unregulated AI in response to
the pope’s encyclical warning about the risks of the technology
In his first major papal text since assuming leadership of the Catholic church last year, Pope Leo issued a stark warning about the rise of artificial intelligence this week, denouncing the “culture of power” driving the AI age.
Calling
for the “most rigorous” ethical constraints on AI – which he described
as one of the greatest threats facing humanity today – the first US-born
pope also warned of “new forms of slavery” emerging through the digital
economy.
Speaking to the Guardian, readers in the US
echoed the pope’s concerns, describing AI as an “unregulated” industry
increasingly being used to the “detriment of too many people”, while
also raising fears about surveillance, labor displacement, war and environmental harm.
For
Linda Given, a 74-year-old resident of Boston, Massachusetts, who ran a
small gift store in Cambridge for nearly 40 years, the pope’s warning
resonated deeply.
“I think he’s right to
emphasize the dignity of humans, and to warn that things in the AI field
are moving both too fast, and without any significant oversight,” Given
said, adding: “To use it as any kind of substitute for human
interaction or human agency [is] awful … [and] the entirely likely
possibility it could be manipulated to do destructive things.”
Stephen Sincoskie, a 55-year-old print shop supervisor from Howell, New Jersey, expressed similar concerns.
“Unregulated
AI is a possible threat to workers, privacy and even human life.
Unfortunately, the most corrupt family in politics … is making money to
look the other way,” he said.
“I’m concerned the use of AI will replace workers
and assist in the ushering in of a fascistic surveillance state. I do
not believe for one second the 1% are interested in paying out
guaranteed monthly salaries for everyone to relax and enjoy a career and
‘debt free’ life.”
Others focused on the effect AI is already having on education and critical thinking.
Debra, a 58-year-old college professor in Massachusetts, said she worries students are losing critical thinking skills.
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“Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom.”
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Pope Leo XIV prays during an evening prayer vigil for peace in St.
Peter's Basilica at the Vatican April 11, 2026. (CNS photo/Vatican
Media)
Carol Glatz
April 11, 2026
Pope Leo XIV called for a prayer vigil April 11 to tell the
whole world it is possible for all people of all religions and
ethnicities to live together and that "we want to be united as brothers
and sisters, united in a world of peace."
"Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of
power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life," he said
during the special vigil for peace in St. Peter's Basilica.
"Those who pray are aware of their own limitations; they do not kill
or threaten with death," he said. "Instead, death enslaves those who
have turned their backs on the living God, turning themselves and their
own power into a mute, blind and deaf idol, to which they sacrifice
every value, demanding that the whole world bend its knee."
"Let
us listen to the voices of children," who write to him all the time,
recounting "all the horror and inhumanity of actions that some adults
boast of with pride," he said.
The vigil, which drew thousands of people inside and outside the
basilica, featured the recitation of the glorious mysteries of the
rosary. Before each mystery was recited, women wearing traditional dress
from countries representing the different continents of the world lit
small lamps from a flame from the Lamp of Peace from Assisi that was
placed below a statue of Our Lady Queen of Peace.
Prayer can move
mountains, he said in his remarks in Italian. "War divides; hope unites.
Arrogance tramples upon others; love lifts up. Idolatry blinds us; the
living God enlightens."
It just takes a tiny bit of faith "to face this dramatic hour in history together," he said....READ MORE
