In a closed meeting in Rome, Pope Leo XIV asked the clergy to write their own sermons. He warned against the temptation to use artificial intelligence and compared the brain to muscles: if you don't use them, they atrophy. He also stressed that preaching is about sharing faith - about sharing experience and a personal relationship - and that AI cannot do that.

A single comment on the use of technology could have been left in the margins. But now it has become part of a wider debate: what happens when spiritual authority meets algorithm?

AI as a tool for the church - or a threat?

It is clear that many clerics - like many teachers, journalists and civil servants - have tried generative language models such as ChatGPT to structure text or sketch out ideas. The technology is fast, structurally neat and often surprisingly rhetorically competent.

So the question is not whether AI can write a "good" sermon. It can.

The question is whether a good sermon is the same as a spiritually relevant sermon.

The essence of the Pope's speech was not technological but theological. The sermon, he said, is not an informative presentation but a witness - a sharing of personal faith with a community. In that context, AI is not just a tool but a filter in between.

Why does the subject immediately become politicised?

The text contains allegations about the political agenda of the church, its activities in the pandemic era, its attitude towards the unvaccinated, and its relationship with immigration and the German Alternative für Deutschland party.

These arguments are part of a wider European culture war in which the church is seen as either:

  1. defender of traditional identity
  2. or as a politically left-wing institution.

When AI enters the picture, the debate expands rapidly:
Has the church lost credibility to the point where even priests no longer write their own sermons?
Or is it just a new tool, demonised for symbolic reasons?

Artificial intelligence and the crisis of authenticity

One of the key rhetorical questions in the article is: "Why go to church anymore when you can have a conversation with an equally informed bot?"

This is not just a provocation. It hits on a wider phenomenon.

Generative models can:

  • answer theological questions
  • produce comforting language
  • simulate empathic dialogue

But they don't:

  • live a religious life
  • take responsibility for the church
  • take part in a community ritual

The crisis in the Church is therefore not primarily technological. It is institutional and experiential. If the community does not perceive the priest's speech as authentic, AI can easily become a symbolic scapegoat.

Is it really about artificial intelligence?

The Pope's remark can be interpreted in two ways:

  1. The conservative interpretation: AI is a threat to spiritual authenticity.
  2. Institutional interpretation: the church is trying to maintain its authority in a world where anyone can generate a theologically valid text.

As language models lower the threshold of expertise, spiritual authority is also put in a new position. The status of the priest is no longer based solely on rhetorical ability or intellectual advantage.

It is based on experience, community and personal testimony.

What really changes here?

Artificial intelligence is unlikely to empty churches.

But it reveals something:

If the congregant feels they are getting the same content on their home computer, the added value of the church must lie elsewhere than in the quality of the text.

So the Pope's warning is not just a technical instruction. It is a reminder of identity.

The question is not ultimately whether ChatGPT can write a sermon.

The question is who will carry it.

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