Before flying to Italy’s southern Puglia region to meet world leaders, Pope Francis hosted a different audience at the Vatican, celebrating the importance of humor. The pontiff welcomed over 100 comedians from 15 nations, including U.S. celebrities Jimmy Fallon, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, Conan O’Brien, and Stephen Colbert. Francis told the comedians, “In the midst of so much gloomy news, immersed as we are in many social and even personal emergencies, you have the power to spread peace and smiles.”
He continued, asking jokingly, “You unite people because laughter is contagious. Please pray for me: for, not against!” Francis pointed out that in the creation, “Divine wisdom practiced your art for the benefit of none other than God himself, the first spectator in history,” with God delighting in the works that he had made. He added, “Remember this: When you manage to bring intelligent smiles to the lips of even a single spectator, you also make God smile.” Francis also said it was okay to “laugh at God” in the same way “we play and joke with the people we love.”
After delivering his speech, Francis greeted all the comedians individually, sharing laughs and jokes with some of them. Goldberg said afterward, “It was great; it was very fast and really loving and made me happy.” O’Brien noted that the pope “spoke in Italian, so I’m not quite sure what was said.” The TV host added, “To be in that room and to be with all my fellow comedians, some of whom I’ve been good friends with for many years, in that environment, was quite strange. All of us were thinking, how did this happen? Why are we here, and when are they going to throw us out?” Colbert admitted his Italian “is really bad; I would like to speak it better.” But he managed to remind the pope that he had done the audiobook for his memoir.
He joked, “It was wonderful; he’ll never forget me.” Later on, Pope Francis became the first pontiff to address a Group of Seven summit, warning world leaders that Artificial Intelligence must never be allowed to get the upper hand over humanity. An array of global chiefs warmly embraced the 87-year-old pope as he made his way around their huge oval table, pushed in a wheelchair as age and infirmity limit his mobility. The pope said AI represented an “epochal transformation” for humanity but stressed the need for close oversight of the ever-developing technology to preserve human life and dignity.
He said, adding that people should not let superpowerful algorithms decide their destiny, “No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being. We would condemn humanity to a future without hope if we took away people’s ability to make decisions about themselves and their lives by dooming them to depend on the choices of machines.”