Pope Leo met with 160 participants in the General Assembly of the Union of Superiors General. The Pope encouraged the use of technology while emphasizing the importance of human connection. The Pope acknowledged the challenges the digital world poses for religious individuals. The assembly, titled “Connected Faith: Living Prayer in the Digital Age,” took place in the Vatican’s Synod Hall. Pope Leo highlighted the opportunities technology offers for communion and mission.
18 days ago
Pope Leo XIV addressed approximately 160 superiors of male and female religious orders during the 104th General Assembly of the Union of Superiors General (USG) on November 26, 2025, in the Vatican's Synod Hall.1 The assembly, themed “Connected Faith: Living Prayer in the Digital Age,” focused on navigating technology's role in religious life.2 The Pope, drawing from his own experience as a former superior, emphasized discernment in the Holy Spirit for the Church's good.2
The Pope highlighted technology's potential to enhance communion and mission in religious communities.1 It enables reaching distant individuals, including those unable to join in person, through new languages and platforms.2 Pope Leo cited his recent livestream connection with 16,000 youth at the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis as a practical example.1
While acknowledging benefits, the Pope warned that digital tools can negatively impact relationship-building.1 There is a temptation to substitute virtual connections for genuine human interactions, which require presence, patient listening, and deep sharing.2 He cautioned against prioritizing efficiency, likening it to becoming "managers of multiple services" dazzled by convenience, potentially turning spiritual journeys into exhausting races.1
Pope Leo stressed preserving in-person instruments of communion, such as chapters, councils, canonical visits, and formation gatherings, which cannot be fully replaced by remote means.1 These physical efforts are essential to evangelical identity and authentic dialogue.2 Superiors bear responsibility for ensuring technology does not erode fraternity or reduce spaces for real encounters.2
At the core of religious life, the Pope placed the relationship with God, nurtured through prayer as a space of trust and openness to divine love.2 Prayer reveals consecrated persons as dependent creatures reliant on the Creator's providence.1 He urged returning to this foundation during the Jubilee Year to avoid anxiety, escapism, or presumption that stifles faith.2
The address underscored walking together as brothers and sisters, forming a "we" stronger than individual selves, as per Pope Francis's Fratelli tutti.1 Religious orders are charismatic bodies where bonds become sacred channels of grace within the Church's synodal mission.2 This communal mystique fosters shared humanity, faith, and fraternity.2
Pope Leo called for balancing digital innovations with timeless values, integrating nova et vetera without fear or laziness.1 This involves embracing technology's talents while cultivating relationships with God and others amid "lights and shadows."2 The challenge ensures mission remains rooted in prayer and authentic connections.1
Examine the Catholic Church’s teaching on technology’s role in communion
The Catholic Church has long viewed technological advancements in communication—ranging from print media to the internet and social platforms—as providential gifts that can enhance human communion, fostering unity, dialogue, and evangelization within the Body of Christ. Rooted in the belief that these tools are fruits of human ingenuity under God's providence, Church teachings emphasize technology's potential to build relationships and extend the Church's mission, while cautioning that it must always serve and never supplant the incarnational, personal dimensions of faith, particularly Eucharistic communion. This balanced perspective draws from Vatican II's foundational documents through recent synodal reflections, highlighting technology's role in bridging distances yet underscoring the irreplaceable nature of flesh-and-blood encounters.
From the earliest Church teachings on social communications, technology has been seen as an instrument aligned with divine providence to cultivate communion among the faithful and with the world. The Second Vatican Council's Inter Mirifica (1963), echoed in subsequent documents, described media inventions as "marvelous technical inventions" that open avenues for sharing news, ideas, and orientations, directly touching the human spirit. Building on this, the 1971 pastoral instruction Communio et Progressio—issued by the Pontifical Council for Social Communications—articulates a core doctrine: these tools, devised under God's guidance, encourage social relations during humanity's earthly pilgrimage, forging new relationships and a shared language that leads to mutual understanding, justice, peace, and ultimately, charity as the expression of fellowship. Here, "communion" is not merely interpersonal but ecclesial, mirroring the Church's life amid the broader human community, where media multiplies bonds of union and facilitates dialogue among Catholics and with the world.
This vision evolves in the post-conciliar era, as seen in the 1986 Guide to the Training of Future Priests Concerning the Instruments of Social Communication. It posits that ideal communication should culminate in "communion," drawing analogies to divine models: Jesus Christ as the "perfect Communicator," who incarnated the Word through his life, words, and the Eucharist—the most intimate form of God-man communion—and the Trinitarian life of eternal communion among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Technology, welcomed as a "wonderful fruit of human work," is thus a means to preach the Gospel "from the housetops" (Lk 12:3), but the Church must vigilantly guard against uses contrary to God's plan that could harm human dignity. By the 1990s, Pope St. John Paul II extended this to the digital realm in his message for the 24th World Communications Day, "The Christian Message in a Computer Culture." He affirmed that computer telecommunications and participation systems strengthen unity among Church members, deepen dialogue with the world, and aid evangelization by proclaiming Christ's salvation with gentleness and power, adapting to each culture as the Church has historically done. These teachings establish technology not as an end but as a bridge to authentic communion, rooted in the Church's mission to unite humanity in Christ.
Contemporary Church documents build on this foundation, portraying digital technologies—especially social media and the internet—as dynamic spaces for encounter, solidarity, and synodal communion. The 2002 document The Church and Internet from the Pontifical Council for Social Communications reaffirms the Church's positive approach, viewing the internet as an extension of media's providential role to meet human needs and advance creation's resources. It unites people in brotherhood, cooperating with God's salvific plan, much like earlier media.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have deepened this reflection through World Communications Day messages. In 2009, Benedict XVI urged media to foster not just connections but commitments to relationships promoting respect, dialogue, and friendship, addressing shifts in communication patterns. Pope Francis, in his 2016 message, invited reflection on the internet's foundation in human relationality, promoting its use for encounters and solidarity to counter isolation. He emphasized entering dialogue with modern men and women, using technologies to listen, converse, and encourage, becoming a "presence" in digital environments that reveals a Church as "home" to all. This aligns with Francis's 2013 address to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, where he called for a Church that walks at humanity's pace, warming hearts like Jesus on the road to Emmaus and building communion amid globalization's disorientation.
The 2023 Dicastery for Communication's Towards Full Presence: A Pastoral Reflection on Engagement with Social Media synthesizes these insights, describing social media as environments for interaction, experience-sharing, and relationship-building, integral to young people's identity. It highlights digital platforms as co-created spaces where the Church must live as "loving neighbors" on "digital highways," proclaiming the Good News and addressing how artificial intelligence influences human encounters. A poignant example is Pope Francis's 2020 prayer in an empty St. Peter's Square during the COVID-19 lockdown, live-streamed to unite millions in isolation, demonstrating digital media's power to extend communion and embrace the world despite physical distance. The document stresses that the social web complements in-person encounters enlivened by body, heart, and gaze, positioning the Church as a "network woven together by Eucharistic communion," where unity rests on truth and the "Amen" of faith, not superficial "likes."
Recent synodal teachings reinforce this missionary dimension. The 2024 Final Document of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops notes how digital culture reshapes space, time, relationships, and faith experiences, offering opportunities for bonds and dialogue but also risks like loneliness, marginalization, and manipulative polarization. It calls for resources to make digital environments prophetic spaces for mission, encouraging local Churches to accompany digital evangelizers and form Christian communities—especially youth—in synodal ways, leveraging the internet's "web of connections" for fuller communion.
While affirming technology's benefits, Church teachings consistently caution against its over-reliance, particularly in sacramental and communal life, where it cannot substitute for personal, embodied presence. Towards Full Presence warns that digital broadcasting of liturgies during the pandemic provided comfort but raises questions about complementing, not replacing, sacramental participation, including concerns over commercial exploitation of Mass retransmissions. The social web "complements – but does not substitute for" fleshly encounters, as true connection transcends technological boundaries, echoing the universal communion in Christ's Body experienced in gathering "in the name of Jesus."
Theological critiques, such as those in Anselm Ramelow, O.P.'s reflections, highlight technology's limits in mediating divine presence. While Scripture itself uses language—a prelapsarian technology—its primary context is the Eucharist, where God's Word becomes present "in person," not virtually. Live-streamed Masses, though useful, correlate with suspended obligations rather than fulfillment, as sacraments like the Eucharist demand physical reception; one cannot commune from a screen, underscoring eating's non-virtual nature as a fitting medium for Christ's real presence. Earlier debates, like those in the 1950s on televising Mass, critiqued its voyeuristic, desacralizing effects, reducing mystery to technique. Jacques Ellul's observations, referenced here, note how technology strips externals, revealing no substitutes for the sacred. Thus, technology aids formation and proclamation but must point back to focal practices like shared meals and in-person worship.
The Church's watchful care, as in Communio et Progressio, ensures media avoids moral ambivalence, promoting unity without fostering division or superficiality. In digital spaces, formation is essential for priests, religious, and laity to navigate hopes, sufferings, and pursuits of truth, beauty, and good, avoiding seduction by indifference or despair.
In summary, Catholic teaching portrays technology as a divine gift enhancing communion by bridging distances, fostering dialogue, and extending evangelization, from Vatican II's optimism to the Synod's call for digital mission. Yet, it insists on complementarity: technology weaves the Church's network but finds its fullness in Eucharistic unity and personal encounters, guarding against virtualization that dilutes incarnational faith. As pilgrims in a digital age, the faithful are invited to co-create these spaces prophetically, ensuring technology serves the journey to the Kingdom where true communion awaits. This nuanced vision calls for ongoing formation, balancing innovation with fidelity to Christ's embodied presence.