PARIS  –  Pope Leo XIV has issued a warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) at the start of his four-day visit to France. The pontiff cautioned against “losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines” in wide-ranging remarks to Church and state officials at the Élysée Palace, following an hour of talks with President Emmanuel Macron. Leo made a similar warning earlier this year when he spoke of the need for AI to be “disarmed” in the first major teaching document of his papacy. In his May appeal, he mentioned the slave trade in relation to AI, suggesting that the world was in danger of normalising the exploitation of people once again.

The highpoint of Leo’s visit to France is set to be a giant Mass attended by more than half a million people in Paris on Saturday, for which an altar has been built on the Place de la Concorde and a large area around the Champs-Élysées sealed off by police. Large crowds are expected throughout the trip, reflecting an enthusiasm that the Church attributes to growing spirituality among the French and other Europeans. He was greeted at Orly airport early on Friday by Macron, with the pair expected to deliver a speech later in the day in Metz. Crowds were meanwhile gathering along a route to the Notre Dame, where the pontiff will later be driven in his popemobile. The president will not be at any of the Pope’s Masses, largely to avoid breaching France’s strict separation of state and religion.  On Friday, Macron hailed Pope Leo’s visit to France as a “great honour”, stressing that French secularism “in no way negates religion”.

 Leo said that “authentic secularity” should not exclude religion “from the public sphere or from education”. In recent years, French politicians have often invoked France’s brand of secularism to justify bans on religious symbols, including Muslim women’s attire, in public spaces and schools. The Champs-Élysées Mass will be attended by Macron’s wife Brigitte and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu. Several candidates for next year’s presidential election are also due, including Marine Le Pen of the nationalist right, centrists Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, and conservative Bruno Retailleau. There were reports of tensions between Macron and the Vatican team sent to make arrangements, with the president allegedly frustrated in his wish for a more ceremonial aspect to the visit. This was dismissed this week by Élysée officials, who said it was customary to offer a visiting head of state – which the Pope is – a range of high-profile events, such as a cavalry escort down the Champs-Élysées. But they said it was never expected that the Pope would actually take the offer up. They did confirm that Pope Leo turned down Macron’s idea of a meeting with artisans who helped rebuild the fire-devastated Notre-Dame cathedral. This was because his agenda was too tight, they said. After a Popemobile ride through crowds to Notre-Dame cathedral on Friday afternoon, Pope Leo XIV will be joined in the evening by 80,000 young people at the Stade de France in northern Paris. On Sunday 150,000 have signed up to attend mass in the Pyrenean sanctuary of Lourdes. On Monday the Pope will be in Metz, in northeast France, where he will pay tribute to Robert Schuman (1886-1963), a founding father of the European Union and a fervent Catholic who is today a candidate for beatification.

The Pope will also meet a group of migrants in Paris, and in Lourdes some victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy.

Born in Chicago in 1955, Pope Leo XIV was originally called Robert Prevost – a French name.

In fact his paternal grandmother was born in Le Havre in Normandy in 1894. When she married in the US many years later she and her Italian husband took the name Prevost, which had been her mother’s maiden-name. France has a historically complex relationship with the Catholic Church of Rome. The country was long known as the “Eldest Daughter of the Church” because supposedly, but inaccurately, it was the first kingdom to convert to Christianity. Actually Armenia, Georgia and Ethiopia preceded it.  In the 14th Century the papacy came in exile to Avignon in southern France, and over following centuries French armies periodically intervened in Italian politics, where popes were secular rulers as well as heads of the Church. Napoleon held two popes in captivity. Recent popes have all come to France, most notably John-Paul II, who came several times between 1980 and 2004, and Pope Francis who came three times, but avoided Paris, going instead to Strasbourg, Marseilles and Corsica.