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Pope Leo XIV’s AI warning speaks directly to Hollywood’s moral crisis
By Lisa Wheeler
Published May 29, 2026
For most of my career, I have worked between two worlds that often misunderstand each other: Hollywood and the Church.
At Carmel Communications, my work has largely been about building bridges between them — helping faith leaders take culture seriously while helping artists, filmmakers and studios recognize the spiritual hunger that still exists inside modern audiences.
That is why Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, affected me so personally.
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Like many people in media, I’ve spent the last few years watching AI go from something abstract and experimental to something practical and unavoidable. AI is already reshaping how stories are developed, marketed, distributed and consumed.
Yet as I read Magnifica Humanitas, I realized the document is not ultimately about technology. It is about the human person and whether our culture still understands what human dignity means.
That question feels especially urgent in entertainment and media because storytelling has always shaped culture. Throughout my career — whether working with The Passion of the Christ, The Chosen, Sound of Freedom, Hallow, or other projects rooted in meaning and transcendence — I have seen firsthand that audiences are not simply looking for distraction. They’re looking for stories that speak to real questions — why suffering matters, what gives life meaning, how people change and where hope can still be found.
Long before I worked professionally in media, I understood instinctively that stories matter. I grew up in South Florida around film sets because my father drove a honeywagon truck for the Teamsters Union. Some of my earliest memories involve quietly watching crews build worlds out of lights, scripts and cameras. What stayed with me wasn’t just how films were made, but the people making them, how exposed artists can be and how a story can connect people who have nothing else in common.
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Years later, after working closely with filmmakers, studios, ministries and religious leaders, I have only become more convinced that culture is one of the primary places where societies reveal what they value most.
That is why Pope Leo’s repeated phrase throughout Magnifica Humanitas — "the civilization of love" — feels so important in this moment.
The phrase was most famously developed by Pope Saint John Paul II, who believed societies cannot survive on economics, politics, or technology alone. They require a moral vision rooted in the dignity of the human person. A civilization of love is built not on domination or efficiency, but on solidarity, truth, mercy, sacrifice and the recognition that every human being possesses inherent worth.
Pope Leo now carries that vision directly into the digital age.
What struck me most about the encyclical is how fluently it engages modern culture. It does not reject technology or condemn innovation outright. Instead, it recognizes both the possibilities and dangers unfolding simultaneously. The deeper problem isn’t AI itself. It’s how easily we start treating efficiency as if it matters more than people.
Hollywood has always adapted to technological change. Sound transformed cinema. Television reshaped storytelling and news. Social media and streaming altered how audiences discover and discuss culture. Technology itself is not the problem.
What feels different about AI is how deeply it reaches into questions of authorship, creativity, credibility and even human presence. As it begins shaping entertainment, journalism and public discourse, the question is no longer only what it can produce, but what it may slowly train us to accept.
At the same time, audiences already seem exhausted by experiences that feel overly engineered or emotionally hollow. Ironically, the more algorithmic culture becomes, the more audiences appear drawn toward honesty, vulnerability and transcendence.
You can see it in the kinds of projects resonating globally right now. Viewers respond to stories that feel emotionally grounded and spiritually sincere. They want narratives that acknowledge suffering without cynicism and hope without manipulation.
That tension is something we navigate constantly at Carmel. We operate inside an industry driven by metrics, visibility, audience targeting and increasingly sophisticated digital tools. Yet the campaigns that resonate most deeply are almost never the ones built solely on optimization. The projects that endure are the ones that touch something fundamentally human.
That is why I appreciate Pope Leo XIV’s willingness to engage culture directly. Magnifica Humanitas feels remarkably aware of the pressures shaping modern life — not only in technology, but also in media, politics, economics, education and entertainment.
Too often, conversations between Hollywood and religious communities are framed through suspicion or caricature. Yet I have spent years watching artists ask profoundly spiritual questions beneath the surface of their work, even when they would never describe themselves in explicitly religious terms. I have also seen faith communities underestimate the enormous influence storytelling has on how people understand morality, suffering, forgiveness and human value.
Culture is not secondary to society. It forms society.
One line from Magnifica Humanitas continues to stay with me: civilizations are measured not by the power of their tools, but by their ability to care for one another.
That feels deeply countercultural at a time when modern life increasingly rewards speed, productivity, optimization and visibility above almost everything else.
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Yet the most meaningful parts of human life have never operated according to those metrics.
Love does not. Parenthood does not. Friendship does not. Faith does not. Great storytelling does not.
No algorithm can fully replicate moral imagination, empathy, spiritual longing, or the quiet transformation that can happen when someone encounters truth through art.
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Artificial intelligence will continue evolving. It will influence every part of our culture and economy. But Magnifica Humanitas reminds us that the central question is not whether machines will become more powerful. The real question is whether human beings will remain grounded enough in truth, dignity and moral responsibility to use those tools wisely.
For me, that is what the "civilization of love" demands in this era.
It asks us to resist building a culture where human beings are valued primarily for output, efficiency, influence, or utility. It asks us to preserve spaces for beauty, contemplation, relationship, creativity, sacrifice and transcendence.
Because if technology continues advancing while our understanding of human dignity erodes, no amount of innovation will ultimately satisfy the deeper hunger beneath our culture.
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The real challenge before us is not only technological. It is moral and spiritual.
The future may depend on whether we remember how to stay fully human while we build it.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/pope-leo-xivs-ai-warning-speaks-directly-hollywoods-moral-crisis