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.

France 24 reported that the Vatican's recent excommunication of followers of the Society of Saint Pius X — the ultra-conservative splinter group — has revived a longstanding feud within the Roman Catholic Church ahead of the visit. The sect has built an extensive network of schools, the outlet noted, giving the schism an institutional footprint in French education rather than a purely doctrinal one.

The AI theme has produced its own subplot. Politico Europe reported that Cardinal Michael Czerny, who leads an AI commission at the Vatican, admitted he has not used artificial intelligence himself, saying he has not had the time. The remark sits awkwardly beside the pope's Paris warnings, and foreign correspondents have treated it as a candid footnote to a fast-moving Vatican file.

For Italy, the diplomatic stakes are structural rather than local. The Holy See is an enclave inside Rome and the Church remains a recurring presence in world coverage of the country, so a papal tour that lands well — or badly — in Paris is read in foreign capitals as a measure of Rome's soft power across the continent. Le Monde described crowds cheering the pope in Paris after the "paradise of machines" warning, and reported his appeal for France to be a "tireless champion of peace".

What the wire supports is a picture of a papacy deliberately spreading its attention: Africa, then France, with bioethics, AI and internal discipline all on the same itinerary. Whether that translates into influence over France's coming electoral argument is a question the sources raise but do not answer. The visit's closing days, and the reaction of French political figures, will be the next thing the foreign press watches.