Three Recent Addresses by Pope Francis
The Need for Listening, Peace in the Holy Land, and the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
During the Advent and Christmas seasons, Pope Francis gave three significant addresses that touch on important theological and ethical themes. In his Christmas address to the Roman Curia given on December 21, he appeals to the story of the Nativity to call on the Curia, and the Church as a whole, to walk in Christ’s footsteps by listening, discerning, and journeying. In his annual Urbi et Orbi message given on Christmas Day, he again points to the Nativity, in this case to Jesus’ role as the Prince of Peace, and decries the reality of war in the Holy Land and in other parts of the globe. And finally in his World Day of Peace message, published on December 8 but dated January 1, 2024, Francis offers some ethical reflections on artificial intelligence, including its uses in war.
Although not at all among the most important or authoritative papal statements and addresses, recent popes have used the annual Christmas greeting to the Roman Curia as a way to communicate their agenda for the Church’s governing offices. Rarely, these addresses have a broader, more public reach. For example, in his 2014 address, Pope Francis bluntly criticized the Curia, foreshadowing the reforms that would be implemented in the 2022 apostolic constitution Praedicate Evangelium. Probably most famously, Pope Benedict XVI introduced his distinction between the “hermeneutic of discontinuity” and the “hermeneutic of reform” when it comes to interpreting the teachings and legacy of the Second Vatican Council in his 2005 Christmas message to the Curia.
Francis’s most recent address probably does not rise to the significance of these earlier messages, but it is still theologically noteworthy. It hearkens back to his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, which is many ways introduced the spirit of his pontificate, and to the ongoing synodal process, particularly the method of “conversation in the Spirit” used throughout the process, including at the recent Synod assembly in the Vatican.
The Christmas address is suffused with Ignatian spirituality, beginning with its use of imaginative contemplation, the process of inserting yourself into a biblical scene or narrative to better engage the Gospel with one’s heart and mind. Francis has used this method before, most prominently in his reflections on the parable of the Good Samaritan in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti. In this case, Francis focuses on some of the main characters in the Christmas story, each of whom embody an important aspect of how the Curia should carry out their work, and indeed how all members of the Church should live out their calling.
First, Francis points to Mary, whom he associates with the habit of listening. Mary listened to and pondered the angel Gabriel’s words before consenting to the role that had been proposed to her. One could also recall passages such as that when, after hearing the shepherds share what the angels had revealed to them about the birth of Jesus, “Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (Lk. 2:19).
Francis claims that listening is not just receiving information, but a process of entering into a relationship with someone. This is true of listening for God, but also when we listen to other persons. He notes that we have a tendency to pigeonhole people or distort what they have said to fit our preconceived notions, but instead we should listen to others with sincerity and reflect on what they are truly saying. We should be open to being transformed by what others have to say.
Second, Francis turns to John the Baptist. John appears in the Christmas story through Mary’s encounter with his parents Elizabeth and Zechariah, but Francis focuses on John’s adult role as prophet. Francis associates John the Baptist with the habit of discernment. What he means by “discernment” here is the capacity to reassess one’s assumptions and expectations through an ongoing encounter with God. Francis notes that, as a prophet, John had preached that the day of God’s judgment was coming, but he experienced a crisis of faith when the Messiah appeared exercising mercy and compassion. He states: “In a word, Jesus was not what people had expected, and even the Precursor had to be converted to the newness of the Kingdom. He had to have the humility and courage needed to discern.” Francis proposes that discernment is the antidote to ailments like legalism, bureaucratic inertia, and an overly abstract approach to living out the faith.
Finally, Francis looks to the Magi as examples of the habit of journeying. What he means by the habit of journeying is the capacity for “leaving ourselves behind,” of getting out of our “comfort zones.” This can include the comforts of a certain lifestyle or self-image but can also include the comfort of “quick answers to life’s complex problems.”
I think by proposing these themes to the Curia, Francis is hoping to challenge inertia in the Church. On many occasions, he has criticized a mindset that is stuck in the past, not just in terms of a rigid view of Tradition that refuses to recognize development in the Church’s doctrine, but also the habit of thinking things must be done as they’ve “always” been done.
His address is also a challenge to polarization in the Church. While reading it, particularly the section on listening, I couldn’t help but think about how critics have harshly reacted to recent documents—like Francis’s Ad Theologiam Promovendam on the discipline of theology (the reactions to which I have written about here), and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent declaration Fiducia Supplicans on blessings for same-sex couples (the reactions to which I hope to write about soon)—apparently without really sitting with the documents and reflecting on what the respective authors were intending to say. Of course, the habits of failing to charitably listen to others, thinking in rigid categories, and seeking quick answers to complex questions are ailments we all struggle with to one degree or another and are a source of the rampant polarization in the Church and in our politics.
Although not mentioned in the address, Francis’s words also made me think about how social media exacerbates these negative habits, making the habits of listening, discernment, and journeying difficult but all the more necessary. As I noted a few months ago, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication has provided some excellent reflections on social media and its role in society that is quite consistent with Francis’s message here.
The Urbi et Orbi (a reference to the pope’s role as both Bishop of Rome and head of the worldwide Catholic Church) is a blessing offered every Christmas and Easter, accompanied by an address that often briefly touches on affairs of the Church and the world. In his recent Christmas Urbi et Orbi message, Francis again turns to the Nativity story, in this case focusing on Christ’s Incarnation as a “small child” who nevertheless fulfills the prophet Isaiah’s foretelling of a “Prince of Peace.” He also refers the audience to the “slaughter of the innocents,” King Herod’s attempt to eliminate Jesus by murdering all the infant boys in and around Bethlehem (Mt. 2:16-18), as the focus of Francis’s message is to decry the ongoing slaughter of innocent people, particularly children, throughout the world.
Francis focuses in particular on the ongoing war in Israel and Gaza, denouncing both Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and the disproportionate civilian casualties caused by Israel’s military response, which he characterizes as an “appalling harvest of innocent civilian victims.” He also laments other long-standing conflicts in the Middle East, such as the civil wars in Syria and Yemen, as well as the political instability in Lebanon. Not surprisingly, he also addresses the ongoing war in Ukraine, saying, “Let us renew our spiritual and human closeness to its embattled people, so that through the support of each of us, they may feel the concrete reality of God’s love.” He also calls for peace in the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, a conflict that has not garnered nearly enough attention in the United States, and he identifies several conflict zones in Africa, as well, as such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa. He likewise calls for lasting peace in Korea.
As he has on several other occasions, Francis also denounces the arms trade. In a poignant phrase, he notes, “The human heart is weak and impulsive; if we find instruments of death in our hands, sooner or later we will use them.”
Perhaps the most theologically notable aspect of the address is his identification of war’s victims with the Holy Innocents, and with Jesus himself. For example, he writes:
How many innocents are being slaughtered in our world! In their mothers’ wombs, in odysseys undertaken in desperation and in search of hope, in the lives of all those little ones whose childhood has been devastated by war. They are the little Jesuses of today, these little ones whose childhood has been devastated by war.
Near the address’s end, he likewise states, “From the manger, the Child Jesus asks us to be the voice of those who have no voice.”
Since the pontificate of Paul VI, the popes have used the World Day of Peace to address a topic of concern and its relation to peace. For example, Pope John Paul II offered his most developed statements on the environment in his 1990 World Day of Peace message. In this year’s message, Francis chose to take on the topic of artificial intelligence and its ethical implications. The message is quite different in theme than the other two considered here, although there are interesting connections.
For one, the pope takes on the question of lethal autonomous weapons, that is, drones or other forms of robotic weaponry that use artificial intelligence to identify and eliminate military targets without input from a human operator. The Vatican has called for an international ban on such weapons, and Francis reiterates that call in his message. He correctly notes that, at root:
The unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and that capacity cannot be reduced to programming a machine, which as “intelligent” as it may be, remains a machine.
In his Urbi et Orbi message, Francis states:
People, who desire not weapons but bread, who struggle to make ends meet and desire only peace, have no idea how many public funds are being spent on arms. Yet that is something they ought to know! It should be talked about and written about, so as to bring to light the interests and the profits that move the puppet-strings of war.
Echoing this theme, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Francis’s World Day of Peace address is his call—expounding on Isaiah’s prophecy that humankind will “beat their swords into ploughshares” (Is. 2:4, also cited in the Urbi et Orbi message)—to divert research funding from finding ways that artificial intelligence can be used for weapons for war to discovering how artificial intelligence can be used to promote peace:
[I]f artificial intelligence were used to promote integral human development, it could introduce important innovations in agriculture, education and culture, an improved level of life for entire nations and peoples, and the growth of human fraternity and social friendship. In the end, the way we use it to include the least of our brothers and sisters, the vulnerable and those most in need, will be the true measure of our humanity.
Francis’s treatment of artificial intelligence is not limited to its uses in war and promoting peace, however. Rather than focusing on more dramatic but more distant questions such as the threat of AI displacing humankind or on the potential personhood of machines (Francis has some trenchant remarks on the limitations of current forms of machine intelligence in paragraph #2), he focuses, I think rightly, on the more everyday ethical issues that AI already poses or will pose in the near future. such as:
The unreliability of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, which, although producing human-like text, can “hallucinate” and produce false or misleading statements. This technology could contribute to misinformation or even concerted disinformation campaigns.
Issues related to “privacy, data ownership, and intellectual property.”
“In the future, the reliability of an applicant for a mortgage, the suitability of an individual for a job, the possibility of recidivism on the part of a convicted person, or the right to receive political asylum or social assistance could be determined by artificial intelligence systems. The lack of different levels of mediation that these systems introduce is particularly exposed to forms of bias and discrimination: systemic errors can easily multiply, producing not only injustices in individual cases but also, due to the domino effect, real forms of social inequality.”
“Jobs that were once the sole domain of human labour are rapidly being taken over by industrial applications of artificial intelligence. Here too, there is the substantial risk of disproportionate benefit for the few at the price of the impoverishment of many.”
Pope Francis couches his reflections on AI in a broader framework of thinking about technology, which he has expounded elsewhere, as well, for example in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’. He correctly notes that technological design embodies certain ethical values and fosters certain kinds of behaviors amongst a technology’s users:
We need to remember that scientific research and technological innovations are not disembodied and “neutral”, but subject to cultural influences. As fully human activities, the directions they take reflect choices conditioned by personal, social and cultural values in any given age. The same must be said of the results they produce: precisely as the fruit of specifically human ways of approaching the world around us, the latter always have an ethical dimension, closely linked to decisions made by those who design their experimentation and direct their production towards particular objectives.
For example, he notes that algorithms can be used to generate stimuli designed to manipulate people’s behavior or limit their choices, which brings us full circle to the concerns about social media I raised earlier. As many have noted, the algorithms used by social media and other digital platforms like YouTube are designed to foster engagement, which often means generating anger, disgust, and eventually polarization, black and white thinking, and extremism, the very ailments opposed to the habits Francis proposes for us in his Christmas message to the Curia. Here in his World Day of Peace message, Francis urges us to think carefully about the design of artificial intelligence technologies so that they can instead foster true human development and authentic human relationships.
Of Interest…
In some positive news, the Vatican has asked the United States bishops to be proactive in promoting listening sessions in the period between last October’s Synod assembly and the second gathering scheduled for October of this year. The faithful are asked to reflect on and offer feedback on the synthesis document produced at the end of last year’s gathering. Unfortunately, the process seems to focus on two “guiding questions” that are so broad that the specific suggestions raised in the synthesis document, some of which I outlined here, may be overlooked in the process.
I recently pointed to the role of Catholic bishops as peacemakers and supporters of democracy in various nations of Africa stricken by conflict or political instability, including the role of Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, O.F.M.Cap. and other bishops in promoting peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As Crux reports, an ecumenical group of election observers, including representatives of the Catholic Church, have pointed to several irregularities in the DRC’s recent elections, and Catholic leaders, including Cardinal Ambongo, have denounced the irregularities. Incumbent Felix Tshisekedi reportedly won over seventy percent of the vote, but opposition leaders have vowed to not accept the election results, leaving the country’s fate in doubt.
Coming Soon…
There have been lots of reactions to the Vatican’s document allowing blessings for same-sex couples, Fiducia Supplicans, including its outright rejection by bishops in Africa and Eastern Europe, for example, and the Vatican has likewise responded to these criticisms. I hope to catch up on all of this in an upcoming article.
Now that the new year is here, next week I hope to return to the regular schedule of two articles per week, one for paid subscribers and one available to all readers. Thank you for your patience!
I also hope to get to work on arranging some interviews to be included in the newsletter, although it may be until at least February before I can conduct and publish the interviews.