A lot of people have told me that a contemplative vocation in the world is hogwash and out of touch with reality. But however much chiding I receive, what I find is the opposite. A habit of Christian contemplation often has the peculiar result of fine-tuning the ear for the groundwater and figuring out where it’s flowing.

 
Augustinian Pope on AI

A few weeks back, Pope Leo sent a message to participants of the Second Annual Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Corporate Governance (Rome, 19–20 June 2025). This conference on AI isn’t, of course, the pontiff’s first intervention into the topic. But it’s certainly one that catches my attention:

AI, especially Generative AI, has opened new horizons on many different levels, including enhancing research in healthcare and scientific discovery, but also raises troubling questions on its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, on our distinctive ability to grasp and process reality. Acknowledging and respecting what is uniquely characteristic of the human person is essential to the discussion of any adequate ethical framework for the governance of AI.

I wrote about something similar a couple weeks before Pope Leo’s message, stressing how Augustinian a theme it was. Like myself with my modest background in machine learning for engineering, Leo as Pope distinguishes AI uses that are essentially efficient or useful (e.g., health research and systems, engineering controls, instrumental tools of scientific discovery) from those that raise questions about what is fully human. With the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), I characterize the latter as contemplative (Antiqua et Nova, no. 29). Well, the U.S.-Peruvian pontiff goes on to quote from the DDF’s very document on AI, remarking that

access to data — however extensive — must not be confused with intelligence, which necessarily “involves the person’s openness to the ultimate questions of life and reflects an orientation toward the True and the Good” (Antiqua et Nova, No. 29). In the end, authentic wisdom has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life, than with the availability of data.

Note that, of all the paragraphs in the lengthy DDF document, the Holy Father zeroes in on no. 29—which, at the start of last month, I suggested is a paragraph that an Augustinian Pope would particularly like. It seems that Leo’s eye did rest on the same place as mine.

Also note the language “ultimate” and “orientation.” This is arguably reminiscent of a Jacques Maritain quote that I referenced when discussing Pope Francis’ invocation of the French philosopher in the AI debate. AI will always lack, in Maritain’s phrase, “the ultimate orientation of all these speculations and deductions towards the highest wisdom, which is a work of love.” Knowledge without an orientation towards wisdom and love is, in the final analysis, nonsensical.

Nobody can say that Christian contemplation doesn’t prepare you for the real world.

 
First Mass for the Care of Creation

The day after I wrote on the Mass for the Care of Creation and its contemplative rationale, Pope Leo celebrated the first Mass for the Care of Creation—at the Borgo Laudato Si’ Ecology Centre at Castel Gandolfo, created by his immediate predecessor no less—and, in his homily, had this to say:

With infinite love, the one God created all things, giving us life: this is why Saint Francis of Assisi calls creatures brother, sister, and mother. Only a contemplative gaze can change our relationship with created things and lead us out of the ecological crisis caused by the breakdown of relationships with God, with our neighbors, and with the earth, due to sin (cf. Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, 66).

A “contemplative gaze” is indispensable. “Only” this will get us to a real solution. That’s what Papa Francisco constantly said. It’s also what the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments stated in its rationale for a Mass for the Care of Creation. And it’s what Pope Leo says.

But wait a minute—wasn’t the Holy Father supposed to be on vacation this week? The unrelenting pace of contemplative news is almost as “bad” as his predecessor. Well, thank you for taking the time for this, Pope Leo. It kind of feels like you just wanted to celebrate a Mass for the Care of Creation really fast and specifically in that garden, though.