Pope slams AI abuse after Trump’s Jesus post
Douala, CAMEROON—Pope Leo XIV on Friday warned that the artificial intelligence (AI) boom could fuel “conflict, fear and violence” while on a trip to Cameroon marked by his ongoing spat with US President Donald Trump.
While Leo has called for caution on AI several times since his election in May 2025, his latest warning comes as Trump faces a backlash over a now-deleted AI generated post seemingly depicting the US leader as Jesus.
After holding Mass in the stifling heat in Cameroon’s economic capital Douala for more than 120,000 joyous worshippers—the biggest event of his landmark Africa trip so far—the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics sounded the alarm over the perils of the technology.
‘Replacement of reality’
“The challenge posed by these systems is greater than it appears: it is not just about the use of new technologies, but about the gradual replacement of reality by its simulation,” he said in a speech to teachers and students at the Catholic University of Central Africa in the capital Yaounde.
“In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.”
It marks the Pontiff’s latest outspoken intervention on his 11-day Africa tour that has seen him abandon his previous restraint to deliver impassioned pleas for world peace—and tussle with fellow American Trump.
‘Handful of tyrants’
After the Pope criticized the US-Israeli war with Iran, Trump lashed out at Leo, branding him “weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy.”
He then posted an AI-generated image seemingly depicting himself as a Christ-like figure, which he later deleted after religious leaders accused him of blasphemy.
And shortly after Leo denounced the “handful of tyrants” ravaging the world in a speech on Thursday, the US president said the Pope needed to understand the realities of a “nasty world.”
‘Long live the Pope!’
Far from the Trump broadsides, Leo has been greeted by adoring, singing-and-dancing crowds wherever he has gone in Cameroon.
Some of Friday’s throng had traveled far or arrived the previous night in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Pope at his Douala Mass.
Waving “branches of peace” and Vatican flags, to lively choral music punctuated by percussion, the crowd chanted “Long live the Pope!” as Leo arrived in a popemobile at the esplanade outside the Japoma Stadium.
“It’s the achievement of a Christian lifetime. When I was little, I thought you couldn’t see the Pope with your own two eyes,” Marguerite Tedga, 72, said after waiting all night with friends from her parish.
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