Opening the academic year at Rome’s Pontifical Universities, the Pope warned against algorithms that compile data without wisdom.
Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass on October 8 at St. Peter’s Basilica for the inauguration of the academic year of the Pontifical Universities of Rome, delivering a homily that ranged from St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians to artificial intelligence, from the fragmentation of knowledge to the importance of friendship, from Nehemiah’s construction site to the world seated in a Roman classroom. It is, one would dare saying, one of the most theologically substantive addresses of his pontificate.
Against algorithms and “bewitchment”
The homily opened with Paul’s worried letter to the Galatians — a community that had been unsettled by “false teachers who exploit the religious sentiments of many believers for their own interests, often pushing them to radicalize certain aspects of the teaching they have received at the expense of the whole.” Leo easily drew the parallel to the present. “There is no shortage of false teachers” in every age, he said — and the antidote is the same as Paul’s: reason, memory, and critical thinking.
The Pope was direct about what study at a Pontifical University is for. “Consider study as a service to faith and truth: for your own good and for the good of so many brothers and sisters for whom the Lord gave his life. For while the encounter with him indeed brings joy and enthusiasm, it is never a matter of being ‘bewitched’ or ‘enchanted.’” The citation is from Galatians 3:1 — Paul’s sharp question to a community that has been dazzled into abandoning the Gospel it received. Theological study, in Leo’s framing, is the discipline that keeps the dazzlement honest.
Memory against the algorithm
One of the homily’s most striking passages came when Leo turned to Paul’s challenge to the Galatians: “Having started with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” He read this as an argument about the relationship between intelligence and memory — and drew a contrast with artificial intelligence.
“The mind must not simply compile data — as an algorithm now does more quickly than we can — but recall lived experiences, which contain depths of meaning that only the human soul can recognize, and connect more deeply with the goodness of these experiences.” The argument is consistent with what Leo said to artists on October 2 and to the International Administrative Sciences institute in August: the difference between human intelligence and machine processing is not a matter of speed or quantity but of interiority — the capacity to recognize meaning in lived experience, to be changed by what is encountered.
“Guard your hearts”
The emotional center of the homily was a direct address to students, researchers, and teachers: “Guard your hearts. Whether you are students, researchers or teachers, guard your hearts, so that every stage of life and every responsibility may be lived ‘with the Spirit.’” The context was Paul’s observation that routine, ambition, rivalry, and other negative forces can over time exhaust and embitter those who began with genuine vocation. “We must therefore return to the heart. That is where it all began; the beginning to which we can always return.”
Leo also called explicitly for friendship — “a precious gift, especially when lived out in the shared search for truth in Christ” — and for rootedness in the People of God: “Value its sensus fidei, and be open to its questions. And do not forget the poor, who are sometimes that persistent friend who comes knocking during the night.”
The world in the classroom
One of the most vivid passages was Leo’s description of the Roman pontifical classroom as a microcosm of the universal Church. “Look around you at university: the world is seated in your classrooms. Studying alongside you are people from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Do not limit yourselves to simply sitting next to one another: get to know one another, talk to one another, listen to one another, share your experiences of the Church, pray together, share moments of leisure, and forge friendships that will last a lifetime.”
He rooted this appeal in the history of the city around them. “It was here that Peter confessed his faith even unto martyrdom. It was here that Paul, the great universal translator of the Christian experience for so many peoples, languages, and cultures, finished his race, having kept the faith.” Rome is not just one more random backdrop for theological study. It is surely one of its more proper environments — a city whose very stones are a document of the faith being studied.
Theology as the meeting point
Leo closed by connecting the address to Magnifica Humanitas, his encyclical on artificial intelligence and the human person, quoting it directly: those grappling with the fragmentation of knowledge and the impact of new technologies on the human mind need “a genuinely healthy attitude requiring rhythms that incorporate silence, in-depth study, reading and judicious analysis, for without these elements inner freedom may be compromised.”
Against that background, he described theology’s particular vocation: “In the construction site of the ‘City of God,’ its research helps to illuminate everyone’s work, serving as a meeting point for diverse fields of knowledge.” The phrase “City of God” is obviously Augustine’s — and for an Augustinian pope opening an academic year, in the basilica built over Peter’s tomb, the reference is surely not incidental.