WelCom August 2024

In his message for the 2024 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Pope Francis has appealed for humanity’s conversion so we acknowledge the disastrous effects of war and set ethical limits on the development of artificial intelligence.

The World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation will be held on 1 September, 2024. The day’s theme this year is ‘Hope and Act with Creation,’ drawn from St Paul’s Letter to the Romans (8:19-25).

The message is broken up into nine sections, which all highlight our responsibility to take care of our Common Home. The environment, the Pope says, ‘is subject to dissolution and death, aggravated by the human abuse of nature.’ Yet, at the same time, he reassures, ‘the salvation of humanity in Christ is a sure hope also for creation, for creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God’.

Creation itself will be set free from its bondage.

‘In our hopeful and persevering expectation of the glorious return of Jesus,’ Pope Francis notes, ‘the Holy Spirit keeps us, the community of believers, vigilant.’

In his Message, the Holy Father goes on to explain that hoping and acting with creation means joining forces and walking together with all men and women of good will. In this way, we can help to rethink, ‘among other things, the question of human power, its meaning and its limits’.

In this context, the Pope says, ‘there is an urgent need to set ethical limits on the development of artificial intelligence, since its capacity for calculation and simulation could be used for domination over humanity and nature, instead of being harnessed for the service of peace and integral development’.

‘To claim the right to possess and dominate nature, manipulating it at will,’ he says, ‘represents a form of idolatry, a Promethean version of man who, intoxicated by his technocratic power, arrogantly places the earth in a “dis-graced” condition, deprived of God’s grace.’

Source: Vatican News