By Robert Duncan, Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) -– Pope Leo XIV said artificial intelligence should support the church’s mission of evangelization, urging Catholic technologists and venture capitalists gathered in Rome to build systems that help spread the Gospel.
“Whether designing algorithms for Catholic education, tools for compassionate health care, or creative platforms that tell the Christian story with truth and beauty, each participant contributes to a shared mission: to place technology at the service of evangelization and the integral development of every person,” the pope wrote.
Pope Leo’s message was read aloud Nov. 7 by Jesuit Father David Nazar during the 2025 Builders AI Forum, a two-day summit for idea-sharing and collaboration hosted at the Pontifical Gregorian University.
Since the beginning of his pontificate, the pope has emphasized the need for ethically grounded AI, but his message to the conference marked the first time he directly linked the technology’s promise to the church’s missionary work.
Forum organizers said the stakes are high, as AI tools increasingly shape how people seek meaning online.
“There are billions of people who do not yet know Christ and the truth that Christianity fully possesses,” said Matthew Sanders, a Catholic AI developer and one of the event’s organizers. “If the church’s guiding hand is not there, this technology has the power to do unimaginable harm, amplifying confusion and despair.”
Registration materials listed roughly 200 participants, including software engineers, venture capital partners, Catholic media producers, bishops and Vatican communications officials. The forum was structured as a working summit rather than a public conference, with most discussions held in small-group workshops.
The registration list included representatives from Microsoft, Palantir Technologies and Goldman Sachs, alongside Catholic filmmakers and ministry leaders. Actor and producer Lorenzo Henrie — who is currently co-financing and starring as an apostle in Mel Gibson’s “The Resurrection of the Christ,” now filming in Italy — was also listed among those participating.
After opening remarks, participants broke into six working groups, each tasked with addressing a specific challenge. Topics ranged from AI in Catholic education to whether the church should attempt to devise a “Catholic Turing Test” for identifying signs of consciousness in advanced systems.
Interest appeared particularly strong in the “Building and Scaling Catholic AI” workshop, which drew about half of the forum’s participants, and was focused on using AI for evangelization.
“We’re starting to leverage AI to impart the truth of the Catholic faith,” Sanders told Catholic News Service Nov. 6. “But there’s more to the faith than just imparting truth. There’s the pastoral, human dimension,” he said.
A recurring concern was how to help people move from digital encounters with Catholic content into lived parish life.
Sanders noted that many users first encounter Catholic teaching through apps such as Hallow or Magisterium AI. Without support, he said, new believers may struggle to find a worshiping community.
“The question is how do we ‘off-ramp’ people from products like Magisterium AI and help ensure that they can find either a community or show them how the faith is lived,” Sanders said.
The goal, he added, is to connect people to a tradition or practice that resonates — whether Eucharistic adoration, charismatic Mass or the Latin Mass — so they are accompanied rather than left isolated.
In another workshop, “AI for Faithful Christian Storytelling in Media,” filmmakers, writers and digital creators discussed how AI might help broaden the reach of Catholic narratives.
For Eike Petersen of Aid to the Church in Need, the problem is not a lack of meaningful stories but a lack of visibility.
“From a communications perspective, there’s so much good work the church is doing for persecuted Christians around the world,” Petersen told participants. “But this is really something I think we can scale with AI.”
Petersen said he hoped the workshop would clarify “what the technology is that’s needed for that and how to approach it,” particularly in regions where digital outreach could expand awareness and solidarity.
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