Pope Leo XIV Warns of a 'Paradise of Machines' as France Visit Tests Rome's Reach

Pope Leo XIV warned on Friday that artificial intelligence risks reducing humanity to a "paradise of machines", speaking at the Elysée Palace at the start of a four-day state visit to France, according to Al Jazeera and Le Monde. The pope also condemned surrogacy, the buying of organs and the notion of "arranging one's own death", Le Monde reported, in a Paris address that placed bioethics alongside technology at the centre of his message.

The visit is being read by the foreign press as an attempt to hold together two very different Catholic worlds. The New York Times wrote that Leo, having toured Africa, is now courting "Roman Catholicism's original heartlands as well as the church's newest strongholds" — a balancing act that runs through Rome and out to Europe's secularising west.

Politico Europe reported that the pope called for dialogue as France's populist forces eye power, defending freedom of conscience without naming the far right, while front-runner Marine Le Pen revived a proposed headscarf ban. From Rome, the trip is less a French domestic story than a test of whether the Holy See's moral vocabulary still carries weight in a European election season.