EWTN News portal reports (May 21, 2026): Cardinal Jose Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, warned at a conference titled “Preserving Human Voices and Faces” that AI deepfakes threaten the “grammar of human encounter,” while Bishop Paul Tighe expressed hopes that Leo XIV’s upcoming encyclical Magnifica Humanitas will “keep the human at the center” of technological development. The conference, organized by the Dicastery for Communication at the Pontifical Urban University, brought together professors, journalists, and engineers to discuss risks AI poses to “authentic human experiences.” What this spectacle truly reveals is not a defense of humanity, but the anti-church’s perpetual substitution of naturalistic humanism for the supernatural order — speaking about the dangers of artificial faces while itself wearing the mask of an institution that abandoned the Face of Christ.
The Grammar of Deception Spoken by Masters of Deception
Let us begin with the bitter irony that saturates this entire conference. Cardinal Tolentino de Mendonça — a creature of the conciliar sect, appointed by the apostate Bergoglio, serving under the usurper Leo XIV — stands before an audience and declares that deepfakes are dangerous because they “lend a person’s face to words they have never spoken” and thereby alter “the very grammar of the human encounter.” One must pause and marvel at the audacity. This is a cardinal of an institution that for over six decades has placed upon the Chair of Peter the faces of men who speak words the Church has never spoken — men who have systematically denied, obscured, and contradicted the perennial Magisterium. The conciar sect itself is the greatest deepfake in the history of Christendom: it wears the face of the Catholic Church while speaking the words of Modernism, ecumenism, religious liberty, and the cult of man.
St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907), identified the Modernist as one who “puts on a disguise” and “assumes the appearance of a Catholic” while inwardly denying the supernatural origin of faith. The entire post-1958 structure is precisely this: a deepfake of the Church of Christ. When Cardinal Mendonça laments that technology “exploits our need for relationship,” he conveniently omits that the conciliar sect has exploited the faithful’s need for the sacraments, for true doctrine, for the Most Holy Sacrifice — replacing them with a counterfeit liturgy, counterfeit doctrine, and counterfeit “encounter” that leads not to God but to man’s self-worship.
“Preserving Humanity” Without God Is Preserving a Corpse
The conference theme, “Preserving Human Voices and Faces,” and the upcoming encyclical Magnifica Humanitas — whose very title exalts “Humanity” with a modifier that echoes the most blasphemous substitution — exposes the fundamental orientation of the anti-church: the worship of Humanitas apart from, and often against, the supernatural order. Bishop Paul Tighe stated that Leo XIV wants to “keep the human at the center.” At the center of what? Not at the center of the Cross. Not at the center of the Most Holy Eucharist. Not at the center of the supernatural life of grace. “The human at the center” is the very definition of the religion of Modernism condemned by St. Pius X, who wrote in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), condemning proposition 58: “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him.”
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), established the Feast of Christ the King precisely to combat the secularism that removes Christ from His rightful reign over individuals, families, and states. He wrote: “When God and Jesus Christ were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The anti-church’s obsession with “keeping the human at the center” is the logical fruit of the apostasy Pius XI lamented. It is laicism dressed in pastoral language — the very “secularism of our times, so-called laicism, its errors and wicked endeavors” that Quas Primas identified as the plague poisoning human society.
When the conference participants speak of “authentic human experiences,” they reveal the phenomenological, immanentist framework that has governed the conciar sect since John XXIII opened the windows to the world. The “authentic human experience” they seek to preserve is one stripped of original sin, stripped of the necessity of sanctifying grace, stripped of the reality of hell, and stripped of the absolute demand for conversion to the Catholic Faith. It is the “cult of man” condemned by Paul VI himself — ironically, in Humanae Vitae — though he too was a modernist architect of the new religion.
The Silence About the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
What is most damning in this entire conference is not what is said, but what is systematically omitted. Not once — in any quoted statement, in any described theme — is there mention of the supernatural order, of the state of grace, of the reality of sin, of the necessity of the sacraments, of the divinity of Christ, of the authority of the true Magisterium, of the social reign of Christ the King, or of the eternal destiny of souls. The “human voices and faces” to be preserved are purely naturalistic entities. The “moral and social questions related to AI” that Leo XIV’s encyclical will address are framed entirely within the horizontal plane of human relations — as if man’s greatest danger were technological manipulation rather than mortal sin and eternal damnation.
This silence is not accidental. It is the hallmark of the anti-church. St. Pius X, in Pascendi, described the Modernist method as one that “explains everything by means of natural causes” and systematically eliminates the supernatural. The conciliar sect has perfected this method for seventy years. When it speaks of “preserving humanity,” it means preserving the natural man — the man of Romans 8 who “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” It has nothing to say about preserving the supernatural life of souls, because it has abandoned the very means by which that life is sustained: the true Mass, the true sacraments, the true doctrine.
The Dicasteries of the Anti-Church: Instruments of the New Religion
The conference was organized by the “Dicastery for Communication” — one of the bureaucratic structures erected by the conciliar revolution to replace the sacred organs of the Church’s governance. The very name “Dicastery” reveals the anti-church’s substitution of administrative machinery for apostolic authority. These are not the Congregations of the Roman Curia as they existed before 1958, operating under the supreme jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff for the salvation of souls. They are instruments of the new religion — structures designed to manage the narrative, control the faithful, and propagate the errors of Modernism under the guise of pastoral concern.
Cardinal Mendonça’s Dicastery for Culture and Education is particularly revealing. Its very existence presupposes that “culture” and “education” are domains separable from the Church’s supernatural mission — that one can speak of “culture” as a neutral, naturalistic category rather than as something that must be entirely ordered to the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Pius XI declared in Quas Primas: “The state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” The anti-church’s fragmentation of reality into “culture,” “communication,” “education,” and other secular categories is itself a denial of the unity of the supernatural order that the true Church embodies.
Leo XIV’s Encyclical: Magnifica Humanitas — The Magnification of Man
The title chosen for the upcoming encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, speaks volumes. It echoes the Magnificat of the Blessed Virgin Mary — “My soul doth magnify the Lord” (Luke 1:46) — but substitutes “Humanity” for “the Lord.” Whether intentional or not, this is the theology of the conciar sect distilled into a single phrase: the magnification of man in place of the magnification of God. The Magnificat is a hymn of supernatural humility, in which Our Lady proclaims that God “hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaid” and “hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart.” The Magnifica Humanitas of Leo XIV promises to be the opposite: a hymn to human autonomy, human capability, and human dignity — divorced from the humility of faith and the necessity of grace.
Bishop Tighe’s statement that the pope wants to “initiate a dialogue” and “create an environment where all the various people who have a part in the development of AI are attentive to keeping the human at the center” reveals the dialogical, horizontal, conciliar method. The true Church does not “initiate dialogue” with the world — she teaches, governs, and commands in the name of Christ the King. The very concept of “dialogue” as a method of engaging with error was condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), proposition 80: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization.” This proposition was condemned as an error. Yet it is precisely the program of Leo XIV and his predecessors since John XXIII.
The Real Threat to “Human Encounter”
If Cardinal Mendonça genuinely wished to defend the “grammar of human encounter,” he would begin by acknowledging that the deepest, most authentic human encounter is the encounter between the soul and God — in prayer, in the sacraments, in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The true “grammar of encounter” is the grammar of grace: man, a sinner, encountering his Redeemer in the sacred mysteries of the Faith. What has destroyed this grammar more thoroughly than anything else in modern history? Not AI deepfakes — but the destruction of the true Mass, the corruption of the sacraments, the silencing of the pulpit, and the replacement of doctrine with dialogue.
The anti-church that Cardinal Mendonça serves has, for seven decades, systematically dismantled every means by which souls encounter Christ. It replaced the propitiatory Sacrifice of Calvary with a Protestantized “memorial meal.” It replaced confession with therapeutic “reconciliation.” It replaced the catechism with “experiential learning.” It replaced the social reign of Christ the King with “interreligious dialogue.” And now it warns that AI might damage “authentic human experiences.” The hypocrisy is staggering.
St. Robert Bellarmine taught that the Church is a “perfect society” — societas perfecta — possessing in herself all the means necessary for her end, which is the salvation of souls. The anti-church, by contrast, is an imperfect society that looks to the world for solutions to problems the true Church never had, because the true Church possessed the supernatural means — the Mass, the sacraments, the infallible Magisterium — to order all things to God.
Conclusion: The Anti-Church Cannot Preserve What It Has Destroyed
The conference on “Preserving Human Voices and Faces” is yet another manifestation of the anti-church’s fundamental orientation: the substitution of naturalistic humanism for the supernatural order of grace. It speaks of “human dignity” without reference to the image of God wounded by original sin and restored by baptism. It speaks of “authentic experience” without reference to the supernatural life of faith, hope, and charity. It speaks of “keeping the human at the center” without acknowledging that the only true center of all creation is Christ — “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Apocalypse 22:13).
Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors, condemned the proposition that “the Catholic religion should not be held as the only religion of the State” (proposition 77) and that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (proposition 80). Every statement emerging from this conference, and every anticipated statement from Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas, falls squarely within these condemned propositions. The anti-church does not teach — it “initiates dialogue.” It does not command — it “offers perspectives.” It does not proclaim the Kingship of Christ — it “keeps the human at the center.”
The faithful who still profess the integral Catholic faith must see through this latest performance. The anti-church warns about artificial faces because it cannot bear to confront its own. The greatest deepfake is not produced by algorithms — it is the conciliar sect itself, which wears the face of Peter while speaking the words of the world, and which, in its latest act of theatrical concern, reveals once more that it has nothing supernatural to offer a world perishing for want of the true Faith. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi — the law of prayer is the law of belief is the law of life. The anti-church prays to man, believes in man, and lives for man. Let those who still adore the true God in spirit and in truth flee from this abomination and cling to the immutable Tradition that predates 1958, the true Mass, and the supernatural order that alone can save souls.
Source:
Vatican warns that AI ‘deepfakes’ threaten the human experience (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 21.05.2026