Pope Leo warned on September 25 in Paris that artificial intelligence could lead to a paradise of machines where humanity loses its standing, as he opened the first papal visit to France in 18 years. He did so alongside Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace, according to The Guardian.
The four-day visit includes a stop in Lourdes and a closing event in Metz, and the speech at UNESCO's Paris headquarters is where the pontiff is expected to set out his call for global regulation of artificial intelligence, according to The National. The statement is not isolated: in May 2026 he published his first encyclical devoted to the subject, and on that same September 25, on the flight to Paris, he argued that AI must be a tool at the service of people and must not replace humanity, according to the AP agency. For Mexico and Latin America, the signal points to the fact that the regulatory debate is no longer purely technical: discussion of a general artificial intelligence law is advancing in the Mexican Congress with the stated goal of being finalized by the end of 2026, according to Infobae.
The figures from the security operation give a sense of the visit's scale: around 600,000 people registered for the Saturday open-air mass in central Paris and 37,000 security personnel were deployed, according to The National. The AP agency reports that official expectations exceed one million attendees in total and that the program includes a vigil with young people at the Saint-Denis stadium. On substance, his first encyclical, published in May 2026, set out the need for robust regulation of AI and asked developers to orient it toward the common good rather than profit, according to the AP agency.
The speech at UNESCO, scheduled for this September 25, is the weightiest piece: there he will set out his call for global regulation before a multilateral forum. In Mexico, the stated goal for a general AI law is the end of 2026, and the legislative debate takes the European and US frameworks as reference points.
This article was written with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.