The “Pope” Who Preaches a Christless Childhood: AI Warnings as Smokescreen for Apostasy
[Antichurch] portal reports: The head of the post-conciliar sect, “Pope” Leo XIV, issued a message to children via the Italian newspaper Avvenire’s youth supplement, Popotus, on March 24, 2026. He warned that children must not seek friendship or knowledge from artificial intelligence chatbots, stating such reliance could “dull their intelligence and their capacity for relationships, and numb their creativity and thinking.” The message, published for Popotus’s 30th anniversary, urged adults to “safeguard childhood” and guide children to become “protagonists of a renewed world.” The “pontiff” framed AI as an ethical challenge comparable to the industrial revolution, a concern that earned him a spot on Time magazine’s 2025 list of the 100 most influential people in AI. He encouraged children to “rediscover the beauty of the world,” quoting Christ’s words about becoming like children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and emphasized values like “trust,” “love,” “a smile,” “courage to ask forgiveness,” and “the beauty of making peace.” He expressed “great concern” over wars and called for recovering “a pure way of seeing reality,” telling parents and educators that “to remain human, we must preserve a childlike way of looking at reality.”
A Naturalistic Mantra Masking the Supernatural Reality of Childhood
The message from the occupier of the Vatican is a masterclass in modernist naturalism, carefully constructing a vision of childhood that is entirely horizontal, psychological, and devoid of the supernatural ends for which every human soul is created. The entire appeal is built on the preservation of a “childlike way of looking” – a vague, sentimental category that reduces the Gospel’s call to childlikeness (nisi conversi fueritis et efficiamini sicut parvuli, Matt. 18:3) to an aesthetic of wonder and trust. This is a deliberate omission of the doctrinal and salvific context. The childlike disposition Christ demands is one of humilitas and fides – a humble, trusting acceptance of revealed truth and a total dependence on God’s grace, not a generic openness to “beauty.” The “renewed world” the children are to help build is presented as a product of this purified human perception and effort, a clear echo of the Gaudium et Spes humanism condemned by St. Pius X as the synthesis of all heresies.
“We must not allow children to end up believing they can find in artificial intelligence chatbots their best friends or the oracle of all knowledge, dulling their intelligence and their capacity for relationships, and numbing their creativity and thinking.”
While the practical warning about AI substituting for human relationships has a surface plausibility, the principle invoked is utterly bankrupt. The “intelligence,” “capacity for relationships,” and “creativity” he seeks to protect are those of the unregenerate natural man. There is not a single mention of sanctifying grace, the sacramental life, the necessity of baptism for a child to become a “son of God,” or the final end of childhood: the salvation of an immortal soul. The “beauty” to be rediscovered is that of the material world, not the pulchritudo aeterna of God and the supernatural beauty of a soul in a state of grace. This is the “cult of man” in its purest form, where the child is an end in himself, a “protagonist” to be shaped by human educators, rather than a filius in Filio to be formed for Christ the King.
The Omission of Sin, Judgment, and the Necessity of the Church
The most damning evidence of apostasy is what is systematically excluded. In a message ostensibly about guiding children, there is absolute silence on:
- Original Sin: The doctrine that every child inherits a fallen nature and requires redemption is absent. The “childlike way of seeing” is presented as an innate purity to be preserved, not a state to be redeemed and elevated by grace.
- The Sacraments: There is no reference to Baptism as the gateway to life in the Spirit, Confirmation as the strengthening for spiritual combat, or Penance as the essential recourse after sin. The “trust” and “love” extolled are presented as natural virtues, not supernatural fruits of the indwelling Trinity.
- The Last Things: Death, judgment, heaven, and hell are unmentionable. The “renewed world” is an earthly utopia, not the civitas Dei. The “beauty of making peace” is a horizontal social harmony, not the peace of Christ which is the reconciliation of man with God.
- The Church’s Unique Role: The “educators” and “adults” are generic. The Ecclesia Catholica as the unica sponsa Christi and the sole dispenser of salvation is nowhere to be found. The child is to be guided by “those who love you,” a relativistic standard that could apply to any religious or secular community.
This silence is not accidental; it is the very essence of the neo-church’s religion. It perfectly embodies the errors condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors:
“The Church is not a true and perfect society… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” (Error 19).
“The civil power… possesses not only the right called that of ‘exsequatur,’ but also that of appeal, called ‘appellatio ab abusu'” (Error 41).
“Moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction” (Error 56).
The “renewed world” is the world of Error 77: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State.” The “childlike way of looking” is the indifferentist “goodness” of Error 16: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation.”
The False Analogy to the Industrial Revolution: A Heretical Framework
The “pontiff” compares the AI challenge to the industrial revolution addressed by Pope Leo XIII. This is a categorically false and heretical analogy. The social encyclicals of Leo XIII (Rerum Novarum, Graves de Communi Re) were firmly grounded in the natural law and the social kingship of Christ as defined in Quas Primas. They addressed the temporal order while constantly referring it to the supernatural end of man. Leo XIII wrote:
“The State… would indeed fall into the greatest danger if it should attempt to regulate everything by laws alone… For there is no power in the State to change the character of the Church or to interfere with her constitution… The Church, indeed, is not bound to the State in such wise that she cannot exist without its protection, or that she may not claim for herself the right and the duty of instructing peoples in all things that concern the salvation of souls.” (Immortale Dei, 1885)
The “Leo XIV” framework, by contrast, is purely secular. His “renewed world” is a project of humanistic education and ethical AI development, devoid of any reference to the Social Reign of Christ the King as defined by Pius XI in Quas Primas:
“It is necessary that the public worship of Christ the King should bear witness to the Church’s teaching and the Christian faith… that all should recognize that the Church has the right to freedom and immunity from the civil power… that the civil power… ought publicly to confess and obey the kingdom of Christ.” (Quas Primas, 1925)
The “Leo XIV” message is the exact opposite: it calls for children to be protagonists in building a world, not for states to publicly submit to Christ’s law. It is the apostasy of the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place – a false pontiff speaking a language of human dignity and progress that is utterly alien to the Catholic Faith.
The Sedevacantist Reality: A Usurper’s Voice
From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, which holds that the See of Peter is vacant since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958, this message is not from a valid Roman Pontiff. It is a communication from the first of the line of antipopes beginning with Angelo Roncalli (“John XXIII”). The very concept of a “pontiff” engaging with a secular publication on the topic of “artificial intelligence” as a central theme of his “pontificate” is a manifestation of the modernist synthesis condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis and Lamentabili Sane Exitu. Proposition #65 of the latter decree states: “The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion.” This “Leo XIV” operates entirely within the paradigm of religious freedom and dialogue, where the Church has no unique salvific role to assert in the public square. His concerns are those of a UNICEF ambassador or a philosopher of technology, not a Vicar of Christ whose primary duty is to proclaim: “Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus.”
The call to “safeguard a childlike way of looking” is a direct contradiction of the Church’s constant teaching on the necessity of doctrinal formation. The Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent commands:
“The pastor should instruct the faithful… that the holy sacrament of Baptism is the first of all the sacraments… because without it we cannot obtain eternal life… Hence it is called the door of the sacraments.”
What “childlike wonder” can exist in a child who dies without Baptism? The “beauty of making peace” is a mockery when set against the eternal war between the City of God and the City of Man. The “universal language of love” is a blasphemous replacement for the lex orandi, lex credendi of the Catholic Church, which alone offers the true sacrifice of Calvary and the true sacraments.
Conclusion: The Smokescreen of a Dying Sect
The message from “Pope Leo XIV” is not a warning against a technological danger; it is a symptom of a deeper, more terrifying apostasy. It uses the language of care and concern to disseminate a Christless, sacramentaless, and salvific-less vision of humanity. It reduces the sublime mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption to a project of preserving “creativity” and “relationships.” It replaces the agon of the Christian life – the battle against the world, the flesh, and the devil – with a struggle against “numbing” AI. It is a perfect distillation of the conciliar sect’s new religion: a religio humanitatis where the child is a “protagonist” to be shaped by the “renewed world,” rather than a soul to be reborn in Christ and formed for the only true world, the Kingdom of Heaven. The true Catholic response is not to heed this false prophet, but to reject his entire paradigm and return to the immutable Tradition that alone can form children for eternal life.
Source:
Pope Leo XIV Warns Children Should Not Look to Chatbots for Friendship (ncregister.com)
Date: 24.03.2026