Vatican announces theme for 60th World Day of Social Communications
“Preserving human
voices and faces” is the theme for the 60th World Day of Social Communication,
which will be celebrated on 17 May 2026, the Sunday before Pentecost.
By Christopher
Wells and Isabella de Carvalho
Pope Leo XIV has
chosen “Preserving human voices and faces” as the theme for the 60th World
Day of Social Communications, set to take place on 17 May 2026.
In a communiqué
announcing the theme, the Dicastery for Communication – responsible for the
World Day – states that “In today’s communication ecosystems, technology
influences interactions more than ever before - from algorithms curating news
feeds to AI authoring entire texts and conversations.”
Acknowledging that
advances in technology offer “possibilities that were unimaginable just a few
years ago,” the Dicastery warns that such tools “cannot replace the uniquely
human capacities for empathy, ethics, and moral responsibility.”
Public
communication, it says, “requires human judgment, not just data patterns.”
Therefore, “the challenge is to ensure that humanity remains the guiding agent.
The future of communication must be one where machines serve as tools that
connect and facilitate human lives, rather than erode the human voice.”
Concerns for the
risks associated with AI
Monday’s
announcement warns of the real risks associated with modern technology: “AI can
generate engaging but misleading, manipulative, and harmful information;
replicate biases and stereotypes from its training data; and amplify
disinformation through simulation of human voices and faces. It can also invade
people’s privacy and intimacy without their consent.”
The Dicastery
cautions, “overreliance on AI weakens critical thinking and creative skills,
while monopolized control of these systems raises concerns about centralization
of power and inequality.”
Those concerns
highlight the urgency of introducing “Media Literacy” or even “Media and
Artificial Intelligence Literacy (MAIL)” into formal systems of education, the
statement says.
The Dicastery
concludes that “as Catholics, we can and should give our contribution, so that
people – especially youth – acquire the capacity of critical thinking, and grow
in the freedom of the spirit.”
A Pope attentive
to these issues
Pope Leo has
repeatedly emphasized the importance for the Church of confronting the
challenges posed by artificial intelligence and the development of new
technologies. In his meeting with the cardinals just days after his election on
May 8, the Pope explained that his choice of papal name was inspired by Leo
XIII, who, “in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question
in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”
“In our own day,”
he continued, “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 defence
of human dignity, justice and labour.”
Later, in a
message to participants in the Second Annual Conference on Artificial
Intelligence, Ethics, and Business Governance, Pope Leo emphasized “the
benefits or risks of AI must be evaluated precisely according to this superior
ethical criterion” of “safeguarding the inviolable dignity of each human person
and respecting the cultural and spiritual riches and diversity of the world’s
peoples.”
Full text of the statement from the Dicastery for Communication
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