Cardinal Parolin Urges Protection of Children’s Dignity in Age of AI

Rome, November 13, 2025 — In a message to the international conference titled “The Dignity of Children and Adolescents in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, warned that humanity risks “its own extinction” if the development of artificial life fails to respect human dignity. He called for interdisciplinary and multicultural collaboration to ensure technology serves true human progress rather than undermines it. 

Cardinal Parolin described the topic as “one of the greatest challenges facing humanity today and in the future,” emphasising that while scientific and technological advances bring opportunities, AI raises “existential and moral questions on a scale rarely seen before.” 

He urged an evaluation of both the risks and benefits of the digital age for individuals, communities, and creation as a whole, noting this scrutiny must inform politics, law, education, and social services. “All this can only take place through interdisciplinary and multicultural efforts if we are to do justice to the complexity of the issue and the diversity of human realities,” he asserted. 

Recalling Pope Francis’s address at the 2017 World Congress on Child Dignity in the Digital World, Parolin reminded participants: “We have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral.”

Source and Image Credits : Vatican News