EWTN News reports that DePaul University hosted a conference titled “Pope Leo XIV: From the Americas, For the World,” where Jesuit Father Philip Larrey praised the antipope’s “fresh” and “humane” approach to artificial intelligence, emphasizing that “machines do not have soul” and that only God can create one. This entire spectacle reveals the conciliar sect’s characteristic obsession with temporal, technological, and worldly concerns while remaining silent on the true crises of faith, the apostasy of the post-conciliar hierarchy, and the eternal salvation of souls.
The Antipope’s Worldly Agenda: AI as a Distraction from Apostasy
The article presents Leo XIV — the usurper of Peter’s throne — as a pontiff uniquely equipped to address the “digital revolution,” drawing a parallel to Leo XIII’s engagement with the industrial revolution. This comparison is not merely historical; it is a deliberate attempt to legitimize the conciliar sect’s pattern of accommodation with the world. Where Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum to defend the rights of workers against the exploitation of liberal capitalism — while simultaneously condemning socialism, secret societies, and the separation of Church and State — Leo XIV offers platitudes about “soulless machines” and the preservation of “human dignity.”
The article states that in “his first message … the day after he was elected pope, he says, ‘I want to help the world in this transition of artificial intelligence.'” Let this sink in: the self-proclaimed Vicar of Christ, upon occupying the chair of Peter, declares his primary mission to be assisting the world — not in returning to Christ the King, not in condemning heresy, not in restoring the Most Holy Sacrifice — but in managing the transition to artificial intelligence. This is the abomination of desolation speaking: a pontificate that substitutes technological ethics for the preaching of the Gospel, that replaces the supernatural order with the digital order.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared: “The plague of our times is secularism, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors.” He instituted the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the removal of Jesus Christ and His law from public life. Leo XIV, by contrast, does not call nations to recognize the royal dignity of Christ; he calls them to navigate the digital revolution. The contrast could not be starker. Where Pius XI saw the denial of Christ’s reign as the root of all social evils, Leo XIV sees artificial intelligence as the defining challenge of the age. This is not a development of doctrine; it is a betrayal of it.
The Jesuit Sophistry of Philip Larrey: Aristotle Corrupted, Not Clarified
Jesuit Father Philip Larrey, described as an associate professor at Boston College and former dean at the Pontifical Lateran University, is presented as an authority on the philosophy of artificial intelligence. His remarks at the DePaul conference are a masterclass in the kind of intellectual gymnastics that characterize the post-conciliar Jesuit order — an order that has produced more modernists, more apostates, and more enemies of the Faith than perhaps any other religious community in the history of the Church.
Larrey states: “The Catholic Church uses Aristotle’s vision of the creation of a soul. Now I have to specify … Aristotle, of course, was brought into the Catholic Church by Thomas Aquinas.” He then claims that Aristotle “believed that the man and the woman were not sufficient to cause a human being. You needed another principle, and that principle was the sun.” This is a grotesque distortion of both Aristotelian and Thomistic teaching. Aristotle’s concept of the active intellect and his speculation on the generation of the soul were precisely the errors that Aquinas corrected and elevated. The Catholic teaching, as defined by the ordinary and extraordinary Magisterium, is that God creates each individual soul directly and infuses it into the body at the moment of conception — not that the sun, or any natural agent, serves as an intermediary principle of ensoulment.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologica (I, q. 90, a. 2; q. 118, a. 2), teaches that the intellectual soul is created by God alone and is not produced by the parents. The Fifth Lateran Council (1513), under Pope Leo X, explicitly condemned the error that the soul of man is mortal or is one in all men — an error that had been propagated by certain followers of Pietro Pomponazzi who distorted Aristotelian philosophy. Larrey’s appeal to Aristotle’s “sun” as a principle of ensoulment is not Catholic theology; it is a neo-pagan naturalism dressed in scholastic language.
Furthermore, Larrey’s claim that “Aristotle said that all living beings have souls, but only the human being has an immortal soul” is a half-truth designed to blur the distinction between the rational soul and the sensitive and vegetative souls. Catholic teaching holds that the rational soul — the anima rationalis — is created immediately by God, is immortal, and is the substantial form of the human body. The souls of animals and plants are not immortal and do not survive death. By conflating these categories, Larrey opens the door to the kind of evolutionary thinking that the Church has consistently condemned. As the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 3) declares: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself.” Larrey’s philosophical framework, which treats the soul as a topic for academic discussion rather than a revealed truth to be believed with firm assent, is a manifestation of this condemned rationalism.
The Omission of the Supernatural: No Mention of Sin, Grace, or the Final Judgment
The most damning feature of the entire article — and of the conference it reports — is what it does not say. There is no mention of the state of grace, no mention of mortal sin, no mention of the sacraments as the ordinary means of salvation, no mention of the necessity of the true Faith for eternal life, no mention of the reality of hell, and no mention of the obligation of all men and nations to submit to the kingship of Jesus Christ.
Larrey discusses consciousness and immortality as philosophical problems related to AI. He says: “Death is part of life. Death is a meaningful part of it. And if you take that away… I think we’re gonna lose a lot of meaning and purpose.” This is the language of secular humanism, not of Catholic theology. The Catholic teaching on death is that it is the consequence of original sin (Gen. 2:17; Rom. 5:12), that it is the separation of the soul from the body, and that it is followed by the particular judgment, in which the soul receives its eternal reward or punishment. The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that the four last things — death, judgment, heaven, and hell — are to be meditated upon frequently as a means of avoiding sin and attaining salvation.
Larrey’s treatment of death as a “meaningful part of life” that gives “meaning and purpose” is a direct echo of the existentialist philosophy condemned by the Church. It is the language of Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, not of the Summa Theologica. It reduces the supernatural reality of death — the gateway to eternity — to a psychological phenomenon that gives “meaning” to human existence. This is the theology of the conciliar sect: a naturalistic, anthropocentric, and fundamentally atheistic worldview that uses the vocabulary of Christianity while emptying it of all supernatural content.
The DePaul University Scandal: A Catholic Institution in Name Only
The conference was hosted by DePaul University’s Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology. DePaul University, like virtually every Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States, has been a hotbed of modernism, dissent, and apostasy for decades. The very name “Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology” reveals its orientation: this is not a center for the propagation of the Catholic Faith, but for the promotion of religious indifferentism and interfaith dialogue — the very errors condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (Proposition 18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church”) and by Pius XI in Mortalium Animos.
The fact that such a conference is held at a nominally Catholic university, featuring a Jesuit priest discussing the philosophy of artificial intelligence with no reference to the true Magisterium of the Church, no reference to the crisis of faith within the conciliar structures, and no reference to the necessity of the true Mass and the true sacraments, is itself a testament to the completeness of the post-conciliar apostasy. As St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: “The Church is an enemy of the progress of natural and theological sciences” (Proposition 57, condemned). The conciliar sect has embraced this condemned proposition wholesale, transforming Catholic institutions into forums for the discussion of every worldly topic under the sun — while the Faith is buried in silence.
The “Soulless Machine” Rhetoric: A Smoke Screen for the Real Idolatry
Larrey’s repeated insistence that “machines do not have soul” and that “only God can be responsible for the creation of the soul” sounds orthodox on the surface. But it is a smoke screen. The real idolatry of the age is not the worship of machines; it is the worship of man. The conciliar sect, through its documents on religious freedom (Dignitatis Humanae), its ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio), and its engagement with the modern world (Gaudium et Spes), has elevated human dignity — understood in purely naturalistic terms — to the supreme principle of its teaching. The result is a Church that no longer preaches the necessity of conversion to the Catholic Faith, that no longer condemns heresy and schism, and that no longer demands the submission of states to the kingship of Christ.
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship” (Proposition 77). The conciliar sect has not merely tolerated this error; it has enshrined it as doctrine. And now, Leo XIV and his Jesuit advisors concern themselves with the ethics of artificial intelligence — a topic that, however legitimate in the abstract, becomes a grotesque distraction when the very structures of the Church have been hijacked by modernists who deny the necessity of the Catholic Faith for salvation.
The Silence on the True Crisis: No Mention of the Conciliar Apostasy
Not a single speaker at this conference, according to the article, addressed the true crisis facing the Catholic Church: the apostasy of the post-conciliar hierarchy, the invalidity of the Novus Ordo Missae, the heresies of Vatican II, the automatic loss of office by manifest heretics, and the duty of the faithful to seek the true Mass and the true sacraments from validly ordained priests in communion with the true Church.
The article mentions panels on “Pope Leo’s connections across the globe, the future of the Church under his leadership, his recent papal trip to Africa, and his missionary work in Peru.” But there is no mention of what “missionary work” means in the context of the conciliar sect. Does it mean the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the administration of the sacraments, and the conversion of souls to the Catholic Faith? Or does it mean interfaith dialogue, the promotion of “human dignity,” and the distribution of temporal goods — all while remaining silent on the necessity of baptism, the reality of original sin, and the exclusive salvific mission of the Catholic Church?
The answer is obvious. The conciliar sect’s “missionary work” is the very opposite of true evangelization. It is the “national conversion without evangelization” that the False Fatima Apparitions document identifies as a contradiction of Catholic ecclesiology. It is the “ecumenism project” that opens the way to religious relativism. It is the “diversion from apostasy” that focuses on external threats while ignoring the modernist enemy within.
Conclusion: The Neo-Church Talks About Machines While Souls Perish
The DePaul University conference on Leo XIV and artificial intelligence is a perfect microcosm of the conciliar sect’s spiritual bankruptcy. It gathers scholars, Jesuits, and self-identified Catholics to discuss the philosophical implications of AI — while the true Faith is trampled underfoot, while the Most Holy Sacrifice is replaced by a Protestant memorial meal, while the sacraments are administered by apostates and heretics, and while millions of souls are led to perdition by a hierarchy that has abandoned its divine mission.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, warned: “If men were ever to recognize Christ’s royal authority over themselves, both privately and publicly, then unheard-of blessings would flow upon the whole society.” The conciliar sect, by contrast, does not recognize Christ’s royal authority. It recognizes the authority of the United Nations, of the tech industry, of the academic establishment, and of the spirit of the world. It is, as the False Fatima Apparitions document concludes, a “potential Masonic psychological operation against the Church” — a structure that occupies the Vatican while emptying it of all Catholic content.
The faithful must reject this abomination. They must seek the true Church — the Church of all ages, the Church that teaches, governs, and sanctifies in the name of Christ the King. They must reject the conciliar sect with its antipopes, its modernist theology, its false ecumenism, and its worldly distractions. As St. Pius X declared in Lamentabili Sane Exitu: “The Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics, because it steadfastly adheres to its views, which cannot be reconciled with modern progress” (Proposition 63, condemned). The conciliar sect has reconciled itself with modern progress — and in doing so, it has betrayed Christ.
Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Outside the Church, there is no salvation. And the Church is not a conference at DePaul University discussing artificial intelligence. The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, founded on the Rock of Peter, governed by the true Pope, and sanctified by the true Mass and the true sacraments. Everything else is the synagogue of Satan.
Source:
DePaul University conference on Pope Leo draws conversation about AI, human dignity (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 04.05.2026