Vatican’s Salamanca Congress: Syncretism of Faith and Algorithms Exposed
The VaticanNews portal (November 14, 2025) reports on an international congress in Salamanca titled “Internal Communication in Catholic and Pontifical Institutions: limits and challenges.” Organized by the Pontifical University of Salamanca and the International Federation of Catholic Universities, the event focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and communication strategies within Catholic institutions. Speakers included Paolo Ruffini (prefect of the Dicastery for Communication) and Paul Tighe (secretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education), who framed AI as a “gift” requiring ethical governance while advocating for a “new humanism” to bridge “the civilization of machines” and “Christian civilization.” The congress emphasized networking among Catholic universities to develop interdisciplinary approaches to technological challenges.
Naturalism Disguised as Pastoral Innovation
The Salamanca congress epitomizes the conciliar sect’s capitulation to naturalism. By treating AI as a neutral “gift,” Ruffini ignores the Church’s perennial warning that “the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19). Nowhere does he reference the regnum Christi (kingship of Christ) over all creation, as solemnly defined in Pius XI’s Quas Primas (1925): “The empire of our Redeemer embraces all men… His law is justice, and His rule is love”. Instead, Ruffini reduces communication to a technical “network woven with truth and freedom,” erasing its supernatural purpose: the salvation of souls through fides ex auditu (faith comes by hearing, Romans 10:17).
“Generative AI represents a significant transition, described as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which requires a fundamental evolution of education.”
Bishop Tighe’s uncritical adoption of secular historical frameworks (“Fourth Industrial Revolution”) contradicts Pius IX’s condemnation in the Syllabus of Errors (1864): “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Error #80). The Church does not “evolve” with industrial revolutions but judges them by eternal verities. Tighe’s call to “educate with AI, about AI, and for AI” presumes technology’s moral neutrality—a fallacy denounced in Pius X’s Lamentabili (1907) as conflating “human progress” with divine truth (Proposition 58).
Subversion of Catholic Education
The congress’s vision for Catholic universities constitutes pedagogical apostasy. Tighe claims these institutions must bring together “the culture of science and the humanistic culture,” but omits the scientia sacra (sacred science) that subjugates all disciplines to theology. This mirrors Modernist errors condemned in Lamentabili: “The dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths fallen from heaven… but an interpretation of religious facts which the human mind has laboriously evolved” (Proposition 22). By prioritizing “digital literacy” over doctrina christiana, the congress reduces Catholic education to vocational training.
Ruffini’s appeal to “rebuild trust in the truth” through “listening and dialogue” exemplifies the conciliar sect’s hermeneutic of surrender. Contrast this with Pius X’s mandate in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907): “The Church does not dialectically debate errors but condemns them with supreme authority.” The Salamanca attendees’ concern about “algorithms contaminating the infosphere” ignores the true contagion: relativism enabled by post-conciliarism’s abandonment of anathema sit (let him be anathema).
The Algorithmic Idolatry
When Ruffini insists “no algorithm will ever replace the beauty of human encounter,” he inadvertently exposes the congress’s anthropological heresy. The “human encounter” celebrated here is stripped of its supernatural end—visio beatifica (beatific vision)—and reduced to sentimental interaction. This aligns with the condemned proposition in the Syllabus: “Moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction… human laws… receive their power of binding from God” (Error #56). By seeking a “new humanism,” the Salamanca participants reject St. Paul’s warning: “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema” (1 Corinthians 16:22).
“The challenge is great… to mend the rift between modernity and the Gospel message.”
This false dichotomy between “modernity” and the Gospel denies Christ’s eternal kingship. As Quas Primas declares: “When men recognize… the royal prerogatives of Christ, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace, and harmony.” The “rift” exists only because the conciliar sect refuses to proclaim the Social Reign of Christ the King, instead genuflecting before technological Baals.
Omission as Apostasy
Most damning is the congress’s silence on the Church’s primary mission: the sanctification of souls through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and sacraments. While prattling about “co-responsibility” and “shared mission,” no speaker mentions sanctifying grace, the Four Last Things, or the necessity of the vera Ecclesia (true Church) for salvation. This fulfills the “False Fatima Apparitions” file’s warning: “The message focuses on external threats… omitting the main danger: modernist apostasy within the Church.”
The Salamanca congress exemplifies the “abomination of desolation” foretold by Daniel: a bureaucratic apparatus masquerading as the Church, promoting anthropocentric technocracy while burying the Cross beneath algorithms. As St. Pius X prophesied: “The enemies of the Church… have become exiles from His Kingdom” (Quas Primas). Only by rejecting this neo-modernist synthesis can Catholics remain faithful to the Depositum Fidei (Deposit of Faith) intact from Pentecost to Pius XII.
Source:
Catholic universities network for a new humanism in an age of algorithms (vaticannews.va)
Date: 14.11.2025