Rome Newsroom, 10 May, 2025 / 11:15 pm (ACI Africa).
Pope Leo XIV met with the College of Cardinals Saturday morning for his first official address since his election, outlining key priorities for his pontificate in the age of artificial intelligence, while emphasizing continuity with his predecessors and commitment to the Church’s social teaching.
The U.S.-born pontiff, speaking in Italian, explained his choice of papal name, noting that Pope Leo XIII “addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution” with his encyclical Rerum Novarum.
“In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor,” Pope Leo said.
The 69-year-old pope began the meeting with a prayer, expressing his gratitude to the cardinals while acknowledging his own limitations in assuming the papacy.
“You, dear cardinals, are the closest collaborators of the pope. This has proved a great comfort to me in accepting a yoke clearly far beyond my own limited powers, as it would be for any of us,” he said.
