Giving an early indication of what he will want to say about the role of AI later, Pope Leo says that while “technological development has contributed to a significant improvement in the living conditions of humanity,” it also regularly prompted discussions about “the ambiguous side of technology, which can cause harm when not used for good.”
He warns about AI creating “a paradise of machines” – it’s a reference to Georges Bernanos’s 1947 essay France Against the Robots – and the need to avoid this, as “the French civilisation worked for centuries to cultivate free individuals fully responsible for their actions.”
He says there is an urgent concern that “we do not lose our humanity amid the paradise of machines that are invading and conditioning our daily lives.”
“There is an urgent need to train minds in ethical discernment, capable of recognising what is morally good,” he says.
Unesco’s director general Khaled El-Enany is speaking now, so it shouldn’t be long until Pope Leo begins his address.
You can watch along below, but I will bring you all the key lines here.
As Pope Leo is making his way through the Unesco building and chatting with the organisation’s leadership, it looks like we need to wait a bit longer for his speech.
He is now walking through Unesco’s “Square of Tolerance,” to applause from Unesco staff.
It’s a big deal for Unesco – it’s the first papal visit since 1980.
Pope Leo signed the guest book saying:
“Grateful for the welcome I have received, it is my hope that with God’s help, Unesco will continue its valuable promotion of international cooperation in the fields of education, science and culture.”
Also, it became clear that the music in the background is actually Jazz Radio. Nice.
Back to France, Pope Leo is about to arrive at Unesco’s headquarters in Paris, where he is expected to deliver a major speech on AI, building on his encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” published earlier this year and his comments earlier today (12:49).
You will be able to watch it live here, but for now, they’re just playing some nice jazz music.
European community affairs correspondent
Meanwhile, the Italian government has been accused of ramping up divisive rhetoric to try to court far-right voters ahead of next year’s general election after it passed a decree aimed at capping the number of newly arrived migrants in classrooms and banning the burqa and niqab in schools.
The prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who leads the far-right Brothers of Italy party, said her government had approved what she called “commonsense measures that do not divide but genuinely help to integrate”.
Writing on social media, she said the measures included:
“A limit of 30% in classrooms for students who do not adequately know Italian, plus tools to learn our language and a halt to burqas and niqabs in school.”
The announcement was a toned-down version of comments she had made earlier in the week at an event organised by Brothers of Italy’s youth division.
“It cannot be that in the classroom it is Italian children who feel left out because they’ve become the minority,” Meloni said as she vowed to “legally set the number of foreign students per class”.
Thursday’s decree also sets out that in cases where students show persistent problems with integrating or struggling to learn the language, their parents will be referred to social services and will have to take free literacy and Italian language classes. Parents’ failure to comply could result in fines of up to €1,000.
The education minister, Giuseppe Valditara, said the measures, set to take effect in the 2027-28 school year, would affect about 1,000 classrooms, or about 0.3% of the total nationwide.
Rights campaigners were swift to link the measures to next year’s election, in which Meloni’s premiership is facing an unexpected challenger on the right.
“She’s creating an emergency that is not a real emergency at all,” said Daniela Ionita, of the campaign group Italians Without Citizenship, pointing out that an estimated 60% of the pupils who could be described as foreign were born in Italy but faced a myriad of hurdles when it came to accessing citizenship.
“Because there are now new parties pushing from the right, I think Meloni is scared,” she said.
I have just picked up a brilliant anecdote from the press pack travelling on Pope Leo’s plane.
As reported by Vatican News,
“Another journalist asked the pope about his fluency in French, and the pope answered that he has been practising a little bit.
But did he did note that he is not using Duolingo any more, as had been reported in certain media.”
That little green owl on his phone won’t be happy about it.
And just moments ago, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said EU member states have agreed on the terms for releasing €6.6bn in European Peace Facility funds linked to military aid for Ukraine.
Of that, €900m is for the EU’s military assistance mission for Ukraine and €1bn will fund new joint procurement of equipment, Kallas said in a post on X.
She said:
“That’s good news for Ukraine and bad news for Russia.
Moscow’s hybrid attacks try to intimidate Europe into scaling back its support for Ukraine. Europe is doing the opposite.”
Earlier, I brought you some comments from Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy, as he updated reporters on his recent political talks, including with the US president, Donald Trump (10:49).
Let’s bring you some more on that.
Zelenskyy also said that the US has proposed that the United Arab Emirates host a trilateral meeting with Ukraine and Russia to discuss efforts to end their four-and-a-half-year war.
“We are awaiting a proposal from the United States regarding the date, and the United States has suggested the Emirates as a possible location,” he said.
After his talks with Trump, Zelenskyy said, Ukrainian negotiators met with their U.S. counterparts to discuss specific details.
“We will inform and discuss these details with the European side, the Americans will talk to the Russians, and we will return in 10 days with either a new perspective or a result,” Zelenskiy said.
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Pope Leo has warned against AI creating “a paradise of machines” as he expressed concerned about “losing our humanity” as a result of the uncontrolled technological advance, including the AI (12:49).
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He is expected to explore this theme further in a later speech at Unesco (10:28), furthering his considerations from his encyclical on AI, published earlier this year.
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Opening the first papal visit to France in 18 years, Pope Leo stressed the country’s history “rooted in the Catholic tradition” (12:41) and stressed that “authentic secularity” does not exclude religion.
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Speaking alongside France’s president Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace, he also appeared to criticise the country’s assisted dying laws (12:55), warning about “a temptation to look to science for a solution and a consolation for all our suffering.”
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Pope Leo also urged everyone not to be “indifferent to suffering” and the “scourge” of war, while also calling for “dialogue and diplomacy” instead of conflicts, and criticising “the mistaken belief” that nuclear arms “guarantee security, … fuelling a new and difficult to control arms race” (13:02).
Pope Leo also reiterates his call for a complete ban on nuclear weapons, which he says offer “the mistaken belief” that they “guarantee security, … fuelling a new and difficult to control arms race.”
He says:
“Yet peace is not merely a balance of power; it is built day by day through dialogue and justice. I therefore urge you never to resign yourselves to the prospect of war or view it as inevitable, but rather to tirelessly promote dialogue and diplomacy in order to preserve peaceful societies that respect the dignity and rights of individuals and peoples – especially in the face of the sounds of marching boots and the multifaceted crises shaking our world.”
He urges France to “remain a tireless architect of peace and multilateralism, particularly within our beloved Europe.”
In a passage playing off France’s motto of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, he says:
“May your freedom ever grow with a commitment to the common good. May your fraternity embrace all of humanity, and may the equality to which you aspire always be established upon the foundations of justice and charity – not by erasing differences between individuals, but by allowing them to flourish harmoniously for the benefit of society as a whole.”
And he ends his speech shortly after.
We will see him again in a few hours: he is expected to deliver a major AI speech at Unesco and later go on a stroll through the streets of Paris before visiting Notre Dame Cathedral, as per his schedule (10:28).
Pope Leo also urges everyone to not be indifferent to the “scourge” of war, primarily in the context of the situation in the Middle East.
“We cannot remain indifferent to such suffering, which wounds human dignity and offends God. The gravity of these situations must challenge us, calling each of us, wherever we may be, to a genuine conversion of heart and a change of attitude.”
Oh, that’s tricky: Pope Leo moves on to “strongly reaffirm that protecting the right to life is the indispensable foundation for all other human rights.”
He warns that “there is a temptation to look to science for a solution and a consolation for all our suffering,” but, he says, that’s merely “an illusion.”
He specifically talks about his concern about “genetic manipulation, surrogacy, organ trade, or the provision of assisted death.”
As explained earlier (10:42), these comments go against the direction of travel in France given the country’s recent decision to approve assisted dying laws.
Leo then also defends the role of Catholic schools and the broader role of Catholicism in public life, as he says that “authentic secularity” does not exclude religion, but focuses on working together.
