Pope Leo's A.I. encyclical: Top takeaways from “Magnifica Humanitas” | Inside the Vatican Podcast

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:05]Welcome back to Inside the Vatican. I'm your host, Colleen Deli. Pope Leo I 14th dropped a 40,000word encyclical on artificial intelligence, human dignity, and the future of civilization on May 25th. In it, he critiques a growing culture of power and dominance and tries to reenter the human person in the pursuit of advanced technologies. He goes back to established Christian principles of human dignity, the common good, and solidarity in a kind of reboot of Catholic social teaching. Is this a direct challenge to Silicon Valley and tech billionaires? What does it say to political leaders who are waging war?

[00:00:39]And what does this encyclical tell us about the kind of church Pop Leo wants?

[00:00:43]Today, we're breaking it down for you as we discuss the key arguments, the most consequential sections, and the potential of this document to shape both the conversation on technology and the Catholic Church's approach to social justice. I'm Colleen Deli, host of American Media's Inside the Vatican podcast, and I'm joined today by my co-host, veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard Oonnell, and America's editor-inchief, Father Sam Sawyer.

[00:01:05]Welcome to Inside the Vatican, both of you.

[00:01:08]>> Good to be here. Glad to be back again, Colleen. Jerry, I want to start with you because you were at the launch of this document on Monday and as we talked about in a previous episode, this was kind of an unusual launch because Pope Leo himself was there. So, I wanted to ask you what stood out to you from this launch either from what the Pope said or from what the others on the panel said.

[00:01:30]>> Well, I've assisted at the launch of many encyclicals over the years and this was quite extraordinary.

[00:01:39]We had here the pope who issuing this promulgating this document there speaking very forcefully and with passion about an issue that he considers is so important that he himself had to be present so as to let people know let the whole of the 1.4 4 billion Catholics around the world know, but also the rest of humanity, that this is an issue that is touching the lives of everyone on this planet, the protection, the safeguarding of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. And so he he presented it really as opening a conversation with the people in the high-tech world. Uh but he also explained in his speech that he had talked to various people, operatives in the field of high technology, families, educators, uh government figures. And it made very clear that uh this document is the result of these conversations and indeed we know that the conversation had been going on behind the scenes for at least one decade.

[00:03:10]>> Yeah. Certainly not even just behind the scenes but in a somewhat visible way.

[00:03:14]The Vatican's been hosting conferences on AI for about a decade like you mentioned.

[00:03:19]>> Yes. And so he he's made very clear We want to dialogue. We're not saying that artificial intelligence is bad or good. It it's an instrument and we want to see how it's going to be used and how we can in conversation with those who are designing it, those who own it, those who are uh going to be the dominating force behind it and the people who are uh going to be the subjects of this u uh in new instrument.

[00:03:59]We want this conversation and we want to bring it out into the public. In other words, I came away with one one clear idea.

[00:04:08]The document itself and what the pope was saying was a call, a wakeup call. He he used these words, we w we must wake up and a call to conscience.

[00:04:21]>> Absolutely. Now Sam, I want to turn to you because in addition to being a Jesuit priest and the editor of America, you also have some experience as a computer programmer, right?

[00:04:30]>> Yes, I I was a software engineer once upon a time, but also long before AI.

[00:04:35]>> That's right. But I know that you keep up with these conversations a bit. So I wanted to ask you about how this document has been received so far by the folks who Jerry's just said are kind of the the subjects, the protagonists of this AI revolution.

[00:04:48]>> You know, I think a lot of that remains to be seen. It was certainly fascinating to have Christopher Ola, one of the co-founders of Anthropic there. Um, and I think you know among the uh the companies who are really at the cutting edge of AI, Anthropic has I would say more visible concern for um AI's uh for how to keep AI safe, how to manage AI well than some of the other companies do. So, it was interesting to see him there and participating in the conversation. But I think a lot remains to be seen about what how this document how Leo's concerns about AI are received in the tech community and among those who are doing AI um at as they say the frontier models of AI. There's already been some reporting of people sort of dismissing this out of hand, saying the church doesn't know what it's talking about. The pope doesn't know what he's talking about. Um but I think there might be room for some longer term engagement. Uh I'm not going to get the quote exactly right, but Ola said during the um during the introduction, the encyclical that it's really important for the AI companies to be in dialogue with people who have a horizon um set in a different place and with a wider perspective than the companies themselves have and that's exactly the value the church brings to this conversation.

[00:06:05]>> Ola also said something that struck me.

[00:06:08]He he said first of all that they are trying he and his the people who are working with him are trying to understand what is happening inside and he said we see something mysterious and something that's troubling and I I I would have liked to really have him spell out what he meant in both cases.

[00:06:30]He thanked the pope for uh inviting him to this presentation and for producing the document and expressed a desire to continue the dialogue. And then the pope stood up and I was told Ola was quite impressed when the pope publicly thanked him for coming and for being there and being open to this dialogue.

[00:06:54]>> Right. Here's what the pope said. He said, "In a special way, I would like to thank Mr. Ola for accepting our invitation. In turn, in the name of the church, I accept your invitation to walk together, to listen and to speak, and together to find the way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence.

[00:07:09]The chemistry between the pope and Ola was very positive. You could see it that they seemed to really connect. And afterwards I heard from somebody who spoke to Ola that he was quite overwhelmed by the pope message the words you've just said to him. And you know at at the end of the day what is important here in such a major development is that you have dialogue that you build friendships that you're able to talk to each other. The Vatican has been doing this now for more than 10 years with people in Silicon Valley.

[00:07:49]We've had Microsoft come to the Vatican, IBM, you've had a lot of different uh people come through and this dialogue is fundamental because it's very clear you're not seeing in the artificial intelligence as something hostile. And so it depends on how we relate to it, how we how it's used for good. And they mentioned quite a number of ways, education, in communication, in medicine and so on. And how it's used for destruction of humanity in the wars, which has changed the nature of conflicts in the modern era.

[00:08:39]>> Right? And we'll return to some of these specific points from the document in a minute. Um but I want us to just go through the document as it's structured.

[00:08:47]Uh beginning with these first two chapters on the development of Catholic social teaching. So Publio begins by reviewing kind of his predecessors various major encyclicals teaching documents and also the second Vatican council's teachings on Catholic social teaching kind of how the church is meant to relate to uh the problems of justice in the world. Um and then in the second chapter he goes into some of the first principles of Catholic social teaching beginning with human dignity above all.

[00:09:15]Um so Sam I wanted to turn to you just briefly. You know what stands out to you about the way that Leo laid out this kind of history of Catholic social teaching and the um the principles the key principles.

[00:09:27]>> One of the first things that jumps out to me is this is a gift to anyone who ever has to teach an introduction to Catholic social teaching class. Um I thought the same. I would be amazed if the I would think all those classes are going to begin with read chapters one and two of magnificas um from now on. Um and really you know as much as the headline for this document and the headline for this encyclical has been the pope writes on AI um I really think the the true spine of the document is Leo's um summary and and program for Catholic social teaching. And where I would really point people um if you want to look at that is paragraph number 45 which is right at the end of the first chapter as it leads into the second chapter where Leo really sets out how he sees history and development of doctrine working in Catholic social teaching. So, if I can be permitted, I'm going to read one sentence from Leo um where he says, "The result the result of the the process of historical development. The result is a harmonious, though not always linear development that is marked by different emphases, progressive insights, and at times changes in perspective that do not break with what came before, but allow its implications to mature." And I think uh one of the things that's going on particularly in these first two chapters of the encyclical is Leo is really saying the church has a way of grappling with new things in history. The famous Rayum Navarum uh of his predecessor Leo I 13th who inaugurated modern social teaching with that encyclical. The church has a way of dealing with new things and allowing its own doctrine, its own teaching to mature in history.

[00:11:10]But what this ends up doing for the church is it reveals the principles that he outlines in the second chapter. I think it's a really beautiful vision of how social teaching works. Um, and I hope people spend spend real time with it, not just with the AI stuff, but with really thinking about how we bring um the tradition to bear on on our lives um and how we continue to carry the tradition forward. I was really struck by this too that he explains as you say it's it's an it's an excellent text for anybody teaching in high school or university. He he explains that the church's social teaching goes way back to scripture to the fathers of the church right through the middle ages right to the modern time and then he starts with Leo the 13th and he picks out two or three aspects of Leo I3's teaching which are still relevant today and then he goes through the popes that followed him And he picks out Benedict the 15th, Pas 11th, Pas the 12th, John the 23rd, Paul the 6th, John Paul 2, Benedict the 16th and Francis. And it is really very impressive. He picks out only two or three points that each of them made which is relevant to the present day. And so it shows you as you correctly say s the the the evolution, the development of of doctrine, the development of the church's way of looking at the new things that come out in history. And now we're faced with a new and but we have a kind of an arsenal if you wish to use a military term uh from the s church's social doctrine which helps us doesn't resolve the problem but is also calling on the church to come up with a new something new itself for the present day.

[00:13:17]There actually are also some significant developments of Catholic teaching that we should mention that aren't particularly about AI in this document.

[00:13:25]The first I think of is uh the discussion of slavery and how the church previously endorsed slavery and then how it took several centuries for it to come around and to say slavery is unacceptable. And it talks about kind of the way that that developed and then apologizes in fact for the church's previous uh endorsement of slavery. And then following that uh there's also a development of doctrine on just war in which Pope Leo says actually just war theory is outdated. This is a conversation that's been going on for a while and that people have been arguing that no modern wars count as just wars because of the nature of war making these days. Um but those were two big big uh kind of news items in this document that I wanted to ask you both about.

[00:14:10]>> So yeah I I think they those were both fascinating. They were interesting as well in the sense that they sort of they came up as almost aides to the the central analysis of the document. And so I think we'll we can probably expect to see both of those themes developed a little bit further in Leo at some future point. I don't think he's going to necessarily just leave them, you know, in single paragraphs or single sentences of an encyclical about something else.

[00:14:38]But uh particularly with slavery um what was really fascinating there is you know there's been tension in the church about how do we um how do we navigate between on the one hand the idea that the tradition that we have in the tradition everything we need from God and on the other hand the fact that clearly the church was in practice wrong on slavery in a bad way for for a thousand plus years. Right? that it took us until the until the 19th century to get a universal clear condemnation of slavery rooted in human dignity. And I think the the framework of how social doctrine um develops through history really gives Leo um he he uses that as a clear standing place to say the church got this wrong because it didn't understand its own principles well enough. It didn't understand its own principles clearly enough. And he he describes it, it's a really beautiful phrase, I think, as a wound in Christian memory. So he doesn't just sweep it under the run under the rug as we used to be wrong about this, we got better. Phew, you know, thank God we can move on. But he says we really have to have to grapple with the fact that we can be wrong about major things like this and need to be educated. And he says it's a caution that we have to take going forward.

[00:15:54]I want to turn to Jerry with one last uh question on these first two chapters, which is on this very interesting bit I found very interesting. At the end of chapter 2, there's just a couple of uh paragraphs labeled an examine for the church, referring obviously to St. Ignatius's famous examination of conscience, but he talks about how this big theme that he's been developing throughout this history of Catholic social teaching and also that he develops around AI and uh even mentions in his talk at the uh introduction of the document there's this theme of kind of the locust of power examining the culture of power and where power is concentrated and how it needs to be shifted towards a model of co-responsibility and we'll talk a thought about how that relates to tech and AI later, but it was interesting when he turned this then onto the church. He's been kind of evoking cidality throughout the document up to this point. And this interesting sentence at the beginning of paragraph 89 stands out to me. He says, "Living out justice in the church means purifying ecclesial relationships and structures from distortions that give rise to inequality, lack of transparency, and abuse of power." Then he talks about the importance of listening to various uh people who have been victimized in various ways. Um and then also kind of the importance of the journey towards justice in the church. I was curious if these paragraphs tell you anything or hint to you anything about Leo's ecclesiology and maybe how he might approach reform in the church.

[00:17:26]Well, there was another part in in connection with communications where he was saying uh we need to be transparent ourself in the church and not to have other people dig out for us things we should have been dealing with ourselves.

[00:17:46]>> Yeah, that was very significant. Yeah, I >> I thought that was quite striking. is obviously I I wouldn't know whether this is a programmatic document because there are elements about the internal life of the church that he deals with here but he in a way they're kind of almost aides in the document in in terms of the main trajectory of the document but they are very significant the ones he chose he's used the two biblical images throughout the text as the frame of the document, the Tower of Babel and then the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. Now, here are two communities because the Tower of Babel, the people were speaking in one language. It was a community the community of people at that time going one way and then here is a second community and interestingly choosing Nehemiah wasn't he the who was serving in in uh the Persian court.

[00:19:03]>> Yes. Yeah. Very interesting >> and very interesting especially in the present moment. uh and Francis, Pope Francis in in 2023 in his talk to the Minerva dialogues.

[00:19:19]>> These are the ongoing dialogues with the tech leaders at the Vatican for the last decade.

[00:19:23]>> He he used he spoke about the the bevel question, but he did not touch on the second one, the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. And so what's come out here I think he he's saying we're like in the church we're building we're building something in the world and I think it was this whole idea of being in engaged in construction and dirting your hands in the process.

[00:19:52]I think this came out very much because in a way this is what was coming out also in the discussion on cinidality in the senate. We're engaged in a process of building something.

[00:20:04]>> Pope Leo returns frequently to this uh the Babel image and the Nehemiah image.

[00:20:10]And I I chuckled a little bit when reading it because I had to go back and refresh myself on Nehemiah. And I imagine many people reading this document had to refresh themselves. You know, that's not necessarily a core scriptural image that a lot of us operate within our memory. But one of the important things that Leo points out about the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem um under Nehemiah is that it's a distributed task, right? It's a task under it's not one central operation happening in just one place. It's a a task undertaken by many different people each working on their own section of the walls. And I think it's that image of cidality and co-responsibility uh a partnership that isn't just uh a responsibility within the church but is a responsibility engaged along with you know in cooperation with society and and particularly um we can probably talk more about this later too but the the shift which I think is significant for thinking about Catholic social teaching that there isn't just the sphere of the family locally you know and various this uh you know concentric circles of of state you know of like of government responsibility but that there's also this now concentration of transnational power in private corporations which is another one of these new things that uh that social doctrine needs to think about carefully reason with and find a way to engage with.

[00:21:36]>> Yeah, absolutely. And that that concentration is sort of an unprecedented thing. Um to go back to your point about rebuilding, I was also struck by how in Poplio's speech on Monday presenting the document, he referred back to this idea of rebuilding together, the necessity of it being, as you said, a distributed task uh with a personal story from when he was in Peru and there had been catastrophic flooding across the region. Obviously, we've heard many times about uh the ways that Leo as a bishop and as a priest was trying to help people recover from that, but he talked about how the rebuilding after those floods had to happen together. It was a communal effort. And certainly down here in New Orleans, I've seen the way that that we all do that, too. So, I think there's a lot of lived wisdom there.

[00:22:31]But let's talk about now these latter chapters that are more specifically on AI, specifically chapters three and four, and then we'll move on to chapter five, which is more focused on peace at the end. Um, I was really struck by how concrete this document gets, how as Leo is going through the different ways that AI uh touches and influences society in various spheres. He talks about education. I think he talks about medicine. Um, he talks about all kinds of different things, tech addiction, which certainly so many of us are subject to. Um, each time he ends it with a few concrete recommendations. And I think this gets back to what we were talking about uh regarding how the power dynamic has shifted, how it's not, you know, states having a lot of regulatory power anymore. Maybe certainly in some places in the EU, but that's not the way that things function over here in the US. Uh and so I'm interested in what you all made of those concrete recommendations that Poplio made and kind of how he's imagining the world taking responsibility for AI.

[00:23:34]Is it something that's possible?

[00:23:37]Well, I think it's very interesting how his analysis of what has happened, the breakdown of multilateralism, how he said people are saying today, he calls what he calls the false realism.

[00:23:54]We're saying today that the things that happened in the second world war couldn't happen now. He said the reality is that all these indicators are that we're moving that way. He quotes Pope Francis who said never in never in human history have we had so much power as we have today. But who holds that power?

[00:24:19]>> If I can cut in very briefly for a second, Jerry, here I was really struck by how often this document quoted Francis. It leans very heavily on Francis's Magisterium, which it felt like a big sign of continuity to me.

[00:24:31]>> Well, it it reminded me of a relay race, you know, where you pass the bat from one to the other, and it's the same bat, but you're going faster, you're going >> and it is very clear that there's really not much daylight between Leo and Francis on the social doctrine. Leo is expressing it in a way. I I I think it's very striking he chose to spoke to speak to that uh really international audience in the Senate hall in English. He could have chosen to spoke it because we all had these uh earphones and we had could have put on translations etc. He chose to spoke speak in English and that went around the world some of the sound bites and this is really one of his strengths I think that he's able to get his message across directly to so many people immediately without intermediaries.

[00:25:31]Secondly, his analysis of power is very very powerful because if if if you look at what he actually says, he speaks about you have the resources, you have your own agenda, you're you're aiming at domination, you're aiming at control.

[00:25:55]And then he he speaks about what is artificial intelligence doing? Is it leading to a new form of slavery because it controls the data on people's lives?

[00:26:11]And it also does this profiling etc. And then of course you you think of what the high-tech has done with China that now en enables the Chinese authorities to control have total control of of of the population.

[00:26:31]>> Yeah. You're talking about the the mass surveillance and then the use of AI to to process that data um in order to to control people. And so he says the culture of power penetrates society, alters relations and behaviors and expands by normalizing war.

[00:26:50]And so he shows this as a real break with what happened at the end of the Second World War when you set up the United Nations with the aim. The chart of the United Nations speaks about uh preventing war from coming back. He's saying the culture of power he says is normalizing war and after the second world war the aim was to try to eliminate war and find new ways of resolving problems and now the United Nations has been almost thrown in the dustpin in terms of negotiating solutions and the the decision to go to war happens very quickly. So norm war is being normalized and peace he says is seen as the space between conflicts not as something that should be total for society. So I was really struck by um two aspects of the concrete recommendations that Leo makes.

[00:27:53]And one is that he he acknowledges over and over again and very clearly that AI does not arise in a vacuum that it's it's trained on um you know the sort of the sum total fund of human knowledge that is part of our common inheritance.

[00:28:10]um and also that it's trained increasingly on data gathered from uh the activity of human beings. And he says one of his concrete recommendations is that we need to think about uh what kind of property rights we assign to that kind of data both the you know the the human the human tradition but also the data that's generated from our activity. um which is a really I so you know he doesn't have a specific economic form to give to that but there's a really powerful recommendation that uh you know a that private property in the Catholic social teaching tradition um is subordinate to the principle of the universal destination of goods and how it is used for social good and then he says this has to expand to include also intellectual forms of property not just tangible physical forms of property. I thought that was a fascinating recommendation. Um, and it'd be interesting to see how it's taken up.

[00:29:07]But the other thing he really kept arguing for is that um, he says, you know, that as much as AI, you know, the systems can be thought of in one way as tools. He says, but they're not strictly neutral because they take on the characteristics both of what they've been trained on and those who have designed them. Um, and he points out often in ways that we don't fully understand yet, right? and can't predict and model and account for. Um, and one of the conclusions he draws from that is that there needs to be um broader participation in governing these things.

[00:29:41]that we can't just leave uh AI models and the use of AI systems to be governed by those who design them and those who decide how they're trained, but that those decisions need to be exposed to a broader conversation and dialogue that involves not only the people who uh who control them, but also the people who are going to be affected by them.

[00:30:02]>> Yes. He calls for accountability that we must be able to uh trace who is responsible for that happening and we had a case I mean really at the beginning of the war in in uh in Iran where they hit the school now who is accountable >> and it's not obvious as something that that the pope points out right it's not obvious so we need a way to conceive of that responsibility and that accountability.

[00:30:33]>> He he's asking for this to be built in to the system because otherwise decisions are being kind of passed on to machines to computers to artificial intelligence. The decision moving away from the human person and he says they have not the power of judgment. One of his very concrete recommendations is that particularly when it comes to the integration of AI with military hardware that uh decisions that are lethal or irreversible he says cannot be left uh to AI. And I I believe I I would struggle for the exact site, but I believe he's echoing Pope Francis there um that the consistently as we've started to have more, you know, drones and other forms of autonomous warfare, the the church has insisted that um when people are making decisions that have lethal consequences or when when decisions with lethal consequences get made, there needs to be a human being responsible for and directly involved in those decisions that those can't be seated to algorithms and AI systems.

[00:31:40]Right. Certainly.

[00:31:41]>> And he highlights how the institutions such as the international criminal courts etc. have been sidelined now.

[00:31:51]They're being kind of dismissed where these are were set up at the end of the last century to overcome the impunity and to attribute accountability for criminal acts.

[00:32:15]And today we we see these are being dismissed. And and so this is another disturbing factor which goes which is part of the culture of power. The culture of power does not want accountability.

[00:32:30]>> So we've transitioned sort of naturally into discussing peace and war which the document does exactly as we have done in this conversation. Um, let's talk now briefly about where this ends because Leo doesn't keep this discussion of peace just at the level of who's making military decisions and how, you know, should dialogue on an international level happen. He actually brings it back down to us and our personal level and our own humanity in a way where everyone has something to contribute even if you are not a person who holds a lot of power in this world. And so I wanted us to return to that to that that humanity that Leo puts at the very very center of this. What stood out to y'all from that final section?

[00:33:15]>> Well, one thing that jumped out to me was uh he actually made that point with a quote from Tolkien.

[00:33:21]>> Yes, I thought that would stand out to you, Sam.

[00:33:23]>> Yeah. Um well, it stood out to a number of people. You know, I I had any number of text messages on Monday. Do you know this encyclical quotes? Um >> quotes Gandalf. So uh it quotes Gandalf um saying it's not our part to master all the tides of the world but to do what is in us for the sucker of those years wherein we are set uprooting the evil in the fields that we know so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. So it's this idea of um even though there are vast things going on, we have local personal responsibility uh to to enter into that rebuilding to use the image from Nehemiah um and to really engage with with what's in front of us and there's that so there's that call um but it's not you know it's not like a retreat into localism um from from Leo because it goes concentrically all the way up.

[00:34:14]He also wants this expressed um in solidarity through multilateral structures at the largest international levels, right? But he's saying the way we get there is by everyone involving themselves personally in this rebuilding. I was also struck, maybe this is me reading as someone, you know, who once upon a time was a software engineer, but there's there's sort of an individualized appeal as well to those who develop AI systems to really take this kind of responsibility um as a as a personal responsibility for them as well.

[00:34:45]Yes, this struck me that he is very much in line with Pope Francis because I remember in in Bolivia when Pope Francis address the popular movements, he says we can't lease everything to the governments.

[00:34:58]uh we at the grassroots level have something we can do to change and really when you listen he he mentions many people in in this document uh Nelson Mandela Martin Luther King Dority they they so many people he he mentions uh he said people who do good who you know basically that God has raised up to to to do good. And he he says we we have this army, I think, I'm not sure if that's the word he used, but the vast number of people in the world who are committed to peace, to working for the betterment of the human society.

[00:35:51]And then he he also comments of course on the tendency under the culture of power and the artificial intelligence of dismissing those who are in incapacitated in one way or another or that the value of a person is only what he produces what he g gives. this thing about accepting human weakness.

[00:36:19]He he comes out very strongly and I I think this is a very important thing in a society where he he speaks about children being their bodies being really wounded as they try to get the material which makes our computers, our cell phones work. And he these are the discarded people.

[00:36:44]And I I'm struck that Leo like Francis, he keeps bringing back the discarded people, the poor of the world and say they too have something to contribute and we must listen and we must also work so that a structure that we are building with artificial intelligence is not going to throw them in the dust bin.

[00:37:12]I I I think that this is the message that comes through if you kind of reduce it in simple terms. He he's been very sensitive to the increase of inequalities in the modern world and he he said it in some earlier speeches and uh I I think that we have here a pope of social justice in in the fullest sense just as Leo the 13th was.

[00:37:40]Leo the 14th is >> yeah many of the points that you're raising um were points that Leo raised in Dexite Tay in his first uh big document which when it came out we talked about how it had been started by Francis finished by Leo and so there was a question of how much of this is Leo how much of it was Francis I think now we are seeing fully that Leo is completely on on this path in his own right all right Sam Jerry there has been so much richness uh to unpack in this document there will so much more that we're unpacking at americanmazine.org. I know we have a number of analysis pieces, think pieces, reflections coming through. Uh so we would uh direct our listeners to visit the website, check out some of those articles. We'll link to some of them in the show notes as well. And uh thank you both for your time and your insights today. I appreciate it.

[00:38:30]>> Great to be together. Thank you very much.

[00:38:32]>> Thank you, Colleen. Thank you, Sam. It's great. I enjoy these discussions with you.

[00:38:37]>> Me, too. Inside the Vatican is a production of American Media. This week's episode was produced by Sebastian Gomes, Will Gautieri, and Ashley McKinnless. It was edited by Kevin Christopher Robas. To keep up with the latest out of the Vatican, please consider purchasing a digital subscription to America Magazine at americamagazine.org/subscribe.

[00:38:55]For American Media with Sam Sawyer and Gerard Oonnell, I'm Colleen Deli. We'll see you next time.