AI and the Homily: A Critical Examination of Pope Leo XIV’s Recent Remarks
The recent remarks of Pope Leo XIV urging priests “to resist the temptation to prepare homilies with artificial intelligence” merit careful and extended analysis. His concerns touch on the nature of preaching, the exercise of the intellect, the authenticity of pastoral communication, and the place of technological mediation in ecclesial life. Because the Pope is correct on several foundational points, it is all the more important to examine where his conclusions do not follow and where his diagnosis of artificial intelligence rests on conceptual misunderstandings.
The Pope’s central affirmations are, in themselves, theologically sound. When he states that “like all the muscles in the body, if we do not use them, if we do not move them, they die. The brain needs to be used, so our intelligence must also be exercised a little so as not to lose this capacity,” he articulates a classical Christian insight: the intellectual and spiritual faculties flourish through disciplined use. Likewise, when he insists that “to give a true homily is to share faith,” and that artificial intelligence “will never be able to share faith,” he expresses a truth that belongs to the heart of the Church’s understanding of preaching. A homily is not a neutral lecture; it is a pastoral act rooted in the preacher’s own encounter with Christ and his participation in the Church’s faith. His further remark that “people want to see your faith, your experience of having known and loved Jesus Christ” rightly underscores that preaching is not merely the transmission of information but the communication of a lived relationship.
Yet these premises, however valid, do not justify the prohibition he proposes. The move from “AI cannot share faith” to “priests should not use AI in preparing homilies” is neither logically necessary nor theologically grounded. It rests on a series of assumptions about what AI is, how it functions, and how priests actually use it — assumptions that do not withstand scrutiny.
The first difficulty is conceptual. The Pope’s argument implicitly treats AI as if it were a rival subject, a quasi‑preacher that might displace the priest’s own voice. But artificial intelligence, as it is actually employed in homiletic preparation, is not a subject in competition with the priest. It is a tool. It does not believe, pray, discern, or love. It does not decide what the homily should address, which wounds in the community need to be named, or which consolations should be offered. It does not stand at the ambo as an icon of Christ. It manipulates language in response to prompts. To say that AI “cannot share faith” is therefore trivially true, but it is also true of every other tool the Church has long accepted: biblical commentaries, concordances, lectionary guides, homily‑help publications, theological dictionaries, and even the collaborative insights of fellow clergy. None of these “share faith” in the strict sense. Yet their use has never been regarded as a threat to the authenticity of the homily, because the act of faith‑sharing is located in the preacher, not in the tools he uses.
A second difficulty concerns the Pope’s claim that reliance on AI risks intellectual atrophy. Tools that assist with drafting, structuring, or refining a text do not, by their nature, diminish the intellect. The history of Christian engagement with technology bears this out. The adoption of the codex did not weaken memory; the printing press did not destroy study; the typewriter and word processor did not erode literacy. In each case, a new tool altered the practical conditions of intellectual work, often freeing human energy from mechanical tasks and enabling deeper engagement with content. There is no reason, in principle, to treat AI differently. A priest who uses AI to generate an initial outline, to test alternative formulations, or to clarify a complex theological point is not thereby ceasing to think. On the contrary, he may be creating more space for lectio divina, for serious exegesis, for consultation of magisterial documents, and for pastoral discernment about the concrete situation of his parish.
A third difficulty arises from the Pope’s warning against the pursuit of “likes” and “followers” on platforms such as TikTok. This warning is pastorally justified, but it is conceptually distinct from the question of AI. The temptation to curate an image, to seek affirmation, or to confuse visibility with fruitfulness is real and spiritually dangerous. Yet this temptation exists independently of AI. A priest can chase digital popularity without ever touching an AI system, and he can use AI responsibly without any interest in social media metrics. To link the two as if they were part of a single phenomenon risks conflating separate moral issues and obscuring the specific discernment required in each domain.
A more fundamental tension emerges when one considers the long‑established practice of papal and episcopal document production. The modern papacy, like most major ecclesial offices, relies extensively on teams of theologians, canonists, private secretaries, and editorial staff in the preparation of speeches, homilies, apostolic letters, and even encyclicals. This is not a criticism but a description of how the Church functions. It is, in fact, a necessity in a global institution whose leaders must address complex theological, social, and diplomatic matters. Papal texts are drafted, revised, vetted, and refined by multiple hands before they are promulgated under the Pope’s authority. The same is true of major episcopal interventions, synodal documents, and many official statements of the Holy See.
This point is not merely theoretical. During the preparations for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Portugal in the early 1980s, for example, the texts of his speeches and homilies were drafted weeks in advance, circulated among advisors, reviewed by local ecclesial authorities, and refined through multiple layers of consultation. Such processes are standard. They demonstrate that the Church has long accepted the legitimacy of delegated editorial competency and mediated authorship, provided that the final text reflects the mind and intention of the one who promulgates it.
Once this historical reality is acknowledged, the argument against the use of AI becomes more difficult to sustain. If the use of human collaborators does not undermine the authenticity of papal or episcopal teaching, then the use of technological tools by parish clergy cannot be dismissed on the grounds that it introduces mediation into the homiletic process. Mediation is already intrinsic to ecclesial communication. The relevant question is not whether assistance is used, but whether the preacher remains the true author — whether he prays, discerns, and takes responsibility for the message he proclaims.
This leads to the central conceptual gap in the Pope’s critique: the absence of a distinction between assistance and substitution. There is, unquestionably, a real moral and pastoral danger in outsourcing the homily. If a priest were to delegate the entire task of composition to a ghostwriter, to copy a sermon wholesale from an online source, or to accept an AI‑generated text without serious review, prayer, or adaptation, he would indeed be failing in his responsibility. The homily, as a privileged moment of the Church’s proclamation, demands the preacher’s own engagement of mind and heart. But this danger is not unique to AI, nor is it inherent in AI as such. It is a danger that arises whenever a priest is tempted to evade the labor of study, prayer, and discernment — whether the shortcut is a printed homily booklet, a colleague’s text, or a digital tool.
Once this distinction is acknowledged, the question becomes more precise: may a priest use AI as one tool among many in the process of preparing a homily, provided that he remains the true author, prays with the Scriptures, discerns the needs of his community, and takes responsibility for every word he proclaims? On this more specific question, the Church’s own historical pattern of engagement with technology offers a strong precedent. From the early adoption of the codex, through the embrace of the printing press, to the use of microphones, radio, television, and digital media, the Church has consistently integrated new technologies into her pastoral practice. In each case, there were voices of caution, sometimes predicting the erosion of memory, the cheapening of the sacred, or the loss of authenticity. In each case, the Church eventually recognized that the decisive issue was not the novelty of the tool but the intentionality of its use.
The same principle applies to AI. If AI is used to replace the priest’s spiritual and intellectual work, it is misused. If it is used to support that work — to suggest structures, to propose alternative phrasings, to help clarify a doctrinal point, or to adapt language to a particular audience — then it functions in continuity with the many aids already present in the Church’s life. The authorship of the homily remains with the priest. The faith shared is his. The pastoral judgment is his. The tool does not preach; it serves the preacher.
It is also important to consider the concrete pastoral context in which many priests live. The Pope himself, in the same dialogue, acknowledges the pressures on clergy: complex family situations among the faithful, the need for outreach to young people, the importance of visiting the sick and elderly, the scarcity of priests in many regions. In such a context, to categorically forbid a tool that could reduce some of the mechanical burdens of writing, and thereby free time and energy for precisely the pastoral tasks he commends — visiting the sick, accompanying the young, nurturing true friendships among priests — risks becoming counterproductive. A theology of technology that does not take seriously the actual conditions of priestly life risks becoming abstract and, in practice, burdensome.
None of this is to deny the legitimacy of the Pope’s underlying concerns. His insistence on “a life of prayer” as fundamental, and his warning against reducing prayer to “the routine of reciting the breviary as quickly as possible,” are entirely consonant with the Church’s spiritual tradition. His call for priests to be close to young people, to understand the crises of contemporary families, to resist “clerical envy,” and to cultivate genuine fraternity is both timely and necessary. These exhortations point to the heart of priestly identity and mission. But they do not logically entail a prohibition on the use of AI in homiletic preparation. At most, they call for a discernment of how such tools can be integrated in a way that supports, rather than undermines, the life of prayer and pastoral charity.
A more coherent and theologically grounded position would therefore proceed along different lines. It would affirm, with the Pope, that the homily is an act of faith‑sharing that cannot be delegated to a machine. It would insist that the priest must pray with the Scriptures, must know his people, and must speak from his own encounter with Christ. At the same time, it would recognize that tools — whether ancient or modern — can legitimately assist the preacher in articulating what he has received and interiorized. The appropriate guidance would not be a blanket prohibition but a set of principles: AI may be used as a tool of study and composition; it must not replace personal prayer, serious exegesis, or pastoral discernment; the priest remains morally and spiritually responsible for the content he proclaims; and any use of AI should be transparent to his own conscience and integrated into a broader life of intellectual and spiritual formation.
In this light, the Pope’s true insight can be preserved without adopting his restrictive conclusion. He is right to say that AI “will never be able to share faith.” Faith is shared by persons, not by systems. But he is mistaken in assuming that the use of AI in preparation necessarily compromises that sharing. Faith is not threatened by tools that help articulate it. On the contrary, when used wisely, such tools may enable the preacher to devote more of his limited time and energy to the very realities the Pope rightly prioritises: prayer, study, pastoral presence, and the cultivation of genuine relationships. The task before the Church, then, is not to reject AI out of hand, but to integrate it thoughtfully, in continuity with her long history of discerning and baptising the tools of each age.
