Where the Pope gets his science
September 24th, 2026 at 11:53 pm (Religion, Society)
There are current or upcoming workshops on evolution, water science, and cosmology. This week features a plenary session on The Future of Science in a Changing World, which leads with a quote from Pope Leo’s AI Encyclical:
Christian humanism does not reject science or technology, but embraces them with gratitude and realism, and grounds them within a higher vocation.
The attending Pontifical Academicians will also have an audience with Pope Leo.
I am fascinated by the existence and activities of this Academy. This is not the way that the Catholic Church’s attitude towards science has been depicted in my experience. Like so many things, the Church’s position is more complex and interesting when you look under the hood!
I didn’t find any Computer Scientists on the list of 80 Academicians (but maybe this is out of scope given the focus on “the mathematical, physical and natural sciences”). There is just one person who is listed as an expert on AI – Demis Hassabis, but he appears under “life sciences” for reasons that were not obvious to me (maybe because his Nobel Prize in Chemistry was for protein structure prediction?). He will speak on “AI and Scientific Discovery” at the Future of Science event.