There is something provocative, in the best sense of the word, about seeing a pope speak about liturgy and artificial intelligence on the same morning. This Wednesday, June 3, 2026, in St. Peter's Square, Leo XIV continued his series of catecheses on Sacrosanctum Concilium — the great conciliar Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy — focusing on rite, sign, and symbol. But in the course of his speech, and without having announced it, he slipped in a warning that caught everyone's attention: the use of artificial intelligence tools by students to write their assignments risks, according to him, depriving them of "the formative effort of thought." Two warnings in one, seemingly unrelated. In reality, a single anthropological conviction: there are spaces of resistance to the automation of the self, and the liturgy is the foremost of these.
This connection is not merely rhetorical. It touches upon the very heart of what the Catholic Church, since Vatican II, has understood by interior formation. Implicitly, it raises a burning question: in a civilization that optimizes everything—tasks, relationships, learning—what remains of the spaces where one is educated through slowness, repetition, and spontaneity? Leo XIV, heir to a magisterial reflection that he himself deepened in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, The answer is unambiguous: the liturgy. And with it, authentic intellectual effort.
Liturgy as a school of resistance
The ritual against the logic of efficiency
The liturgical gesture is first and foremost a slow gesture. It is repetitive. It obeys a grammar that the faithful did not invent and which, precisely for this reason, shapes them from within. Leo XIV formulated it with rare precision this morning of June 3rd: «Through the solemn sobriety of its rhythms, the rite interrupts frenetic activities, bringing us back to what is essential.» This is not a concession to nostalgia. It is an anthropological diagnosis. In the liturgy, «we discover another dimension of action, which is not guided by calculations of efficiency… a logic of gratuitousness, a pause that regenerates the heart.»
This vocabulary—efficiency, frenzy, essential—is that of contemporary cultural criticism. But the Pope links it to Sacrosanctum Concilium, which already invited the faithful to a «conscious, active, and fruitful participation» in the liturgy, that is, to a total presence, body, soul, and spirit intertwined. This is not an invitation to ritualistic nostalgia. It is a pedagogy of reality: learning to inhabit a time that is not oneself, to consent to a sequence that one has not chosen, to allow oneself to be preceded by grace. Saint Paul said nothing different to the Thessalonians when he invoked the integral sanctification of the human being: «May your spirit, your soul, and your body be kept blameless» (1 Th 5, 23). The whole person is summoned — not to perform, but to be transformed.
The symbol as a memory of meaning
Leo XIV emphasized the symbolic grammar of the liturgy, recalling that sacred signs "do not refer merely to an abstract idea, but to a whole system of meanings and values." Catechism of the Catholic Church He specifies: their meaning "is rooted in the work of creation and in human culture, is clarified in the events of the Old Covenant and is fully revealed in the person and work of Christ." The symbol is therefore a living memory — it does not inform, it transforms.
This distinction is crucial in the digital age. An algorithm processes data; a liturgical symbol engages with a history. Baptismal water does not signify "purification" like a pictogram on a road sign. It accomplished What it signifies is that it recapitulates millennia—from the flood to the crossing of the Jordan, to the water gushing from Christ's pierced side. Romano Guardini, quoted by Pope Francis in Desiderio desideravi and taken up by Leo XIV, posited that "the first task of liturgical formation requires man to rediscover his symbolic capacity." This is precisely what is at stake. A civilization that delegates its narratives to generative machines gradually loses its capacity to live a symbol — to receive it, to transmit it, to be formed by it.
AI in education: an impoverishing convenience
Intellectual effort as a formative asceticism
Leo XIV's warning about AI in schools did not come out of nowhere. It is a direct continuation of Magnifica Humanitas, Published on May 15, 2026, the Pope clearly stated that "artificial intelligences, lacking experience, values, and feelings, cannot and must never assume a role of responsibility and supremacy over human intelligence." But on the morning of June 3, he applied this principle to a concrete, everyday case: the student who entrusts an AI with writing their assignment. This seemingly innocuous act deprives the young person of something irreplaceable—the formative effort of thinking.
The term is strong: trainer. It is not simply a matter of learning content. It is about self-education through the practice of searching, structuring, weighing words, doubting, and starting again. Ecclesiastes sensed this when he observed: "The wise man meditates in his heart" (Qo 8, 16). Meditation—whether scriptural, philosophical, or intellectual—is not productive in the economic sense of the term. It is formative in the pedagogical and spiritual sense. It builds an inner life. And it is precisely this inner life that AI short-circuits when it produces in a few seconds what a young mind would have taken hours to build.
Magnifica Humanitas: the doctrinal framework
The encyclical Magnifica Humanitas This offers a solid doctrinal framework for understanding this concern. Leo XIV identifies three areas threatened by algorithmic domination: truth—"in an age where everything is manipulable, it is necessary to preserve an education in critical thinking"—, work—which risks "losing its human and relational value"—, and freedom—"threatened by digital dependencies and the mass collection of data." Education permeates these three areas simultaneously. An assignment written by AI is an attack on truth (the work presented is not its own), on work (the formative task is outsourced), and on freedom (the young person becomes dependent on a tool that thinks for them).
Theologian Romano Guardini, whose thought discreetly permeates this pontificate, had already analyzed in The End of Modern Times The Promethean temptation of a technology that claims to liberate humanity from its own limitations—when these limitations are precisely the site of its growth. This insight finds a direct and striking application today in classrooms around the world.
The same spiritual logic: gratuity, slowness, formation of the heart
Liturgy and studies: two schools of the same anthropology
What is remarkable about Leo XIV's words on June 3rd is the inner coherence that runs through his two seemingly distinct points. The liturgy is a space of resistance to the logic of efficiency. Intellectual effort is another. Both require acceptance of duration, repetition, and productive discomfort. Both presuppose an anthropology in which the human being constructs himself. by doing, not in receiving passively a finished product. It is the same logic as that of the biblical Sabbath: rest is not the abolition of effort, but its culmination after it has been accomplished. Deuteronomy reminds us of this by articulating work and rest in the same foundational commandment: «Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God» (Dt 5, 13-14). The meaning of this rhythm is not the mechanical alternation between production and pause; it is the ordering of human life according to a logic that goes beyond mere efficiency.
This Christian anthropology of time—work, rest, contemplation—is precisely what algorithmic logic challenges. An AI does not rest. It does not contemplate. It optimizes. What the Pope implicitly proposes is that liturgy and intellectual effort are two forms of the same inner Sabbath: two ways of refusing to allow human beings to be reduced to a nexus of automatic processes.
The Formation of the Inner Man
Cardinal Robert Sarah, in his work The power of silence, Cardinal Sarah had formulated this diagnosis with prophetic clarity: «The modern world is suffering from a fatal disease. It is losing its sense of mystery, silence, and interiority.» What Leo XIV illustrates on a pedagogical level, Cardinal Sarah had foreseen on a contemplative level. Liturgy, silence, intellectual effort—all require this same inner exploration that digital culture tends to fill before it even begins.
The Jesuit philosopher and theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar also emphasized kenosis as the structure of all spiritual growth: emptying oneself to be filled, accepting not knowing in order to learn. This kenotic logic is at the heart of the liturgical pedagogy he describes Sacrosanctum Concilium And as Leo XIV put it: «We learn to live in a rhythm inhabited by the Holy Spirit.» We don't learn to live in a rhythm instilled by the Spirit by outsourcing our thoughts to a machine. We learn it by accepting effort, repetition, and slowness—as much in prayer as in study.
Vigilance as a vocation of the Church
Leo XIV was not the first to ask this question. John Paul II, in Fides and Ratio, He had affirmed that faith and reason are «like the two wings that allow the human spirit to rise toward the contemplation of truth.» Reason delegated to algorithms can no longer constitute a wing—it becomes a burden borne by others. The Church, since its origins, has defended the unity of faith and intellect, refusing to allow one to develop at the expense of the other. What the Pope is signaling on June 3rd is that this unity is now threatened not by philosophical skepticism, but by technological convenience.
It is in this sense that media and digital vigilance is not peripheral to the Magisterium—in this historical moment, it is one of its most urgent expressions. The recent appointment of new leaders to head the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See also marks the institutional desire to place these issues at the very heart of the Gospel witness. The Church does not speak of AI as a technician. She speaks of it as a guardian of humanity—drawing, for this purpose, upon its oldest resource: the liturgy, a school of slowness and a living memory of the gift received.
On the morning of June 3, 2026, in St. Peter's Square, under the Roman June sky, a pope slipped between rite and sign, between the water of baptism and the liturgical grammar, a question that concerns us all: at what speed do we want to build our own humanity? Leo XIV's answer is clear, and it is ancient: at the speed of a heart that rite has taught to allow itself to be regenerated.
✝ Biblical references
3 passages · 3 books
Pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18)
First letter of Paul: encouragement to holiness and teaching on the resurrection.
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You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. (Deuteronomy 6:5)
Moses' final speech: a reminder of the Law and an exhortation to faithfulness before entering Canaan.
→ Explore the Codex Deuteronomy
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1:2)
A philosophical reflection on the meaning of life, work and time in the face of death.
→ Explore the Codex Ecclesiastes🌍 1 Catholic country
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