Crux

[Editor’s Note: These are the second excerpts of a two-part interview between Pope Leo XIV and Crux Senior Correspondent Elise Ann Allen contained in her new biography of the pontiff, León XIV: ciudadano del mundo, misionero del siglo XXI, or “Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the XXI Century.” The book is published in Spanish by Penguin Peru and will be available for purchase in stores and online Sept. 18. English and Portuguese editions will be available in early 2026.]

Allen: Another potential challenge, something that all of your recent predecessors have prioritized, and I think Pope Francis certainly with a new impetus, is the topic of ecumenism. What will your approach be? Will this be a similar priority for you as pope?

Pope Leo: Absolutely. I think that the recognition from the time of the Second Vatican Council of trying to work towards an authentic unity of all Christians has to be one of the goals of the Church today. One of the deepest wounds in the life of the Church today is the fact that as Christians we’re divided. So, I speak about building bridges; sometimes it’s easier to build bridges with people who aren’t Christian than it is with our Christian neighbors. There are things that separate us, there are things that keep us from all being united with authentic communion in what we believe.

Specifically, one of the things that I’m trying to promote this year, as you know this is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. Pope Francis had already planned on going to Nicaea, then he got sick, the date was postponed twice, and then we had to find a new date. I very much am interested in [this] and will hopefully be going to Nicaea at the end of November. Some had initially envisioned that with a meeting of the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew and myself. I requested that that become an ecumenical occasion to invite Christian leaders from many different Christian religions or Christian communities to all take part in this gathering at Nicaea, because Nicaea is a Creed, it’s one of the moments that before the different divisions took place, we can all still find a common profession of faith.

So, symbolically, that’s an answer to your question. Yes, it is a priority. I’ve already met with a number of patriarchs, including the representative of Patriarch Kirill from Moscow. The Russian Orthodox, after the Catholic Church, are the largest Christian denomination in the world, but because of the war, because of certain declarations, that separation has grown wider rather than narrower, now. I believe that another aspect of my service to the Church and to believers is to build bridges there as well. Obviously, there are some difficulties, it’s very well known, between the Patriarch of Moscow and the Patriarch of Constantinople, and choices that have been made within the world of Orthodoxy. If the Bishop of Rome can help build bridges between different people, bring people together, I think there’s certainly challenges in that, but a great service to be offered, because ultimately, we do all believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and our Savior.

So, there are a lot of things that have taken place in the history of the world that have continued to divide: who believes in this, who believes in that? What’s the role of the bishop of Rome within the world of believers? But we have to keep working on this. A very concrete issue is finding a common date for Easter. That’s still on the agenda. We’ve taken some steps. I’m not going to say we’ve made progress, but we’ve taken some steps at looking at different ways to approach that. That too is very complex, beginning with the fact of the difference between the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar, and who’s going to make the first move and how we can do that. We’re looking at it, we are working on it. It is a goal, it’s an important issue.

On the other side, there is also the question of interfaith dialogue. Pope Francis made dialogue with Islam a major priority. Some would say, perhaps, that the Jewish community has felt neglected in recent years, especially in light of the most recent war in Gaza. For you personally, what do you see as the biggest priority or area of opportunity for the Holy See right now in terms of interreligious dialogue and relations?

I may be too presumptuous, but I daresay that already in the first couple of months, the relationship with the Jewish community as such has improved a bit. I think there it’s important to make some distinctions that they themselves will make in terms of what the government of Israel is doing and who the Jewish Community are. But fortunately, I think there has been, even in a couple of meetings I’ve already had, a little bit of coming closer. I think the roots of our Christianity are found in the Jewish religion, and we cannot close our eyes to that. I think there’s much to be said and much to be done.

With Islam, I’ve already had a couple of meetings. Of course, Islam is not one reality either, so you can meet with one group, and you have other groups, and it’s not easy. I think Francis, specifically with Islam, made great strides in overcoming some of the barriers that had existed because of specific historical things in recent and further past. But, for the good of world peace, there’s no other way to go in this sense. I think that to look for ways of promoting opportunities for dialogue, mutual respect, and understanding is very, very important. Obviously, it’s another issue on the agenda and I would hope to continue that, and not only with Islam.

I had a very nice meeting with a group of Buddhists who had come to Rome. Again, to show mutual respect for one another and to understand that different people will have different beliefs. I believe very strongly in Jesus Christ and believe that that’s my priority, because I’m the Bishop of Rome and Successor of Peter, and the pope needs to help people understand, especially Christians, Catholics, that this is who we are. And I think that’s a beautiful mission.

When that mission, however, becomes distorted, thrown into ideologies, misunderstood, then things become more complicated. But I’m not afraid to say I believe in Jesus Christ and that he died on the cross and rose from the dead, and that we together are called to share that message. To say that doesn’t mean that I’m going to disrespect or offend or set a crusade against people of other religions, because that’s just not the answer, we’ve learned that through history.

Circling back to the topic of artificial intelligence and the crisis you said is coming, what role can the church have in this? Why is it so important, and what role can the church play?

On the topic of artificial intelligence, every time I try to say something, then I read the news the next day, and artificial intelligence has jumped further ahead. The development that is happening at an incredible rate is also worrisome. But to answer your question, if we lose sight of the value of humanity, and we think that the digital world is the be-all and end-all, and then the extremely rich people who are investing in artificial intelligence, totally ignoring the value of human beings and of humanity, I think the Church has to speak up there. Our human life makes sense not because of artificial intelligence, but because of human beings and encounter, being with one another, creating relationships, and discovering in those human relationships also the presence of God.

It’s going to be very difficult to discover the presence God in AI. In human relationships, we can find at least signs of the presence of God. When I speak about respect for one another, and the importance of family, and the values of equality and living and working together in peace, those are values that grow out of a real understanding of the wonderful gift that God gave us as human beings. If the Church doesn’t speak up, or if someone doesn’t speak up about that, but the Church certainly needs to be one of the voices here, the danger is that the digital world will go on its own way and we will become pawns, or left by the wayside.

The whole issue of labor, work. Human dignity has a very important relationship with the work that we do. The fact that we can, through the gifts that we’ve been given, produce, offer something in the world and earn a living, which is part of even respect for oneself, respect for one’s family. Some of those values are at risk right now, so I think the Church needs to raise that issue.

I was very interested, this is going back two years, when Pope Francis for the first time, for any pope, was invited to meet with the G7 when they had the meeting in Bari to talk about this issue. The church is not against the advances of technology, not at all, but the role of faith and reason, the role of science and faith, I think to lose that relationship will leave science as an empty, cold shell that will do great damage to what humanity is about. And the human heart will be lost in the midst of the technological development, as things are going right now.

Another aspect of artificial intelligence is identifying and maintaining the truth in a time of ‘deep fakes.’ Social media is rife with misinformation, and now AI fakes, someone could even fake an interview with you. How can truth be protected and preserved as this runaway car, so to speak, of AI continues to develop every day?

That’s a really good question. I don’t know that I have an answer other than to continue to say to people that there is truth, authentic truth. I don’t have a lot of tolerance when I hear people say, ‘well, this is an alternate set of facts’, which we have heard in the past. No, facts are facts. Even in these limited three months as pope, one day speaking with someone they said, ‘are you alright?’ And I said, ‘yeah, I’m fine, why?’ ‘Well, you fell down a flight of stairs’. I said, ‘no I didn’t’, but there was a video somewhere where they had created this artificial pope, me, falling down a flight of stairs as I was walking somewhere, and it apparently was so good that they thought it was me. That’s just a little, not very significant example, but it’s an example of what can be done.

Someone recently asked authorization to create an artificial me so that anybody could sign on to this website and have a personal audience with ‘the pope’, but this artificial intelligence pope would give them answers to their questions, and I said, ‘I’m not going to authorize that.’ If there’s anybody who should not be represented by an avatar, I would say the pope is high on the list. I mean, in one sense, the human creativity, the possibilities that we have because of our creativity, can be used for all kinds of different things.

I’m not at all against artificial intelligence. In the medical world, great things have happened because of AI, in other ways as well. Yet there’s a danger in this because you do end up creating a fake world and then you wonder, what is the truth? Even yesterday I spoke with a group, the Jubilee of Influencers, and one of the things that I emphasized was how to work together to really make sure we’re dealing with truth, honesty, the real, and not just spreading more fake news. It’s a big challenge, because the temptation is for people to create that, but they create that because there seems to be a need in some people to receive it. Why are all these people consuming this fake news? There’s something going on there. People want to believe in conspiracies, people want to look for all this fake stuff, and that’s very destructive, very destructive.

Final question. You are only the second pope in history to be elected during a jubilee year; the last one was Innocent XII in 1700. This is not just a generic jubilee year, but it is the Jubilee of Hope. What significance does that hold for you personally? What do you think that you, or potentially your Augustinian spirituality, have to offer the world today in terms of hope?

There was, at the time of Lent and Easter, that extremely powerful experience of Pope Francis’s last days. He was becoming very sick, and then the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the balcony and his last tour around Saint Peter’s Square, then his death the following day, which expresses in a very real way what we believe in, in terms of the Paschal mystery: life and death and new life. The Jubilee year is, and this year especially because the theme is hope, but a jubilee is precisely about living our faith in a rather intense way as pilgrims as we come to Rome, or as we make our own pilgrimage and go through the Holy Door, which is obviously a symbolic expression of coming to what the Lord is calling us to. That’s part of the mystery of life.

So, to be called by the Church, my brother cardinals, to take on this specific ministry as Successor of Peter has, for me, been in a real sense part of that pilgrimage of death and new life. It’s quite frankly not an easy thing to give up everything that you were and had in the past and take on a role that’s 24 hours a day, basically, and so public. Everything is known about me, past, present, etc., and the responsibilities, and the mission itself. Yet the message of hope, the fact that this is a Jubilee year is a constant reminder to me about what it means in my life to live this ongoing path of both conversion and of offering to others the message of the Gospel. It is a hope-filled message that still today has great meaning in the world in a very challenging time.

In a sense, symbolically, my first two months have represented a great deal of the kinds of conflict that the world is living in right now. Yet in the midst of that, I sleep well, I very much feel the presence of the Lord, the Holy Spirit is with me. I know there are big challenges ahead. I’m just beginning. Yet the jubilee year of hope, and the response that I’ve gotten…I haven’t gone very far out of Rome, but everything, the letters I receive, what I’ve seen from many parts of the world, that’s the Holy Spirit. There’s something going on in the midst of the Jubilee year that people are discovering hope in their lives and somehow saying, we want to be part of that.

That’s been a real blessing for me personally, and I hope to continue to walk with others in that spirit. I can only say, that’s not me, the Lord is doing all of this, so it’s in His hands. Precisely at the middle of the year coming into this, having both the excitement and the challenges, but filled with hope because I really believe that what the church is about, we have a lot to offer to the world.