ROME (LifeSiteNews) –– Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has announced Pope Francis will attend the G7 meeting in Italy this June, accepting an invitation from the Italian government in order to discuss artificial intelligence.
In a video published on Friday afternoon, Meloni stated that the 87-year-old pontiff had accepted an official invitation from Italy to attend the event. “I am honored to announce today that Pope Francis will be attending the G7 working session dedicated precisely to artificial intelligence,” she stated in a video posted on X.
JUST IN: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni states #PopeFrancis will attend the G7 Leaders Summit in Italy this June, participating in Outreach meetings re AI. #Vatican press office confirms.
G7 ministers are also committed to providing abortion. pic.twitter.com/RYfYJeF4tx— Michael Haynes 🇻🇦 (@MLJHaynes) April 26, 2024
“This technology can create great opportunities, but also brings huge risks,” said Meloni in a video announcement. The G7 “commitment,” she added, “is to ensure that artificial intelligence is both human centered and human controlled.”
The June 13 to 15 meeting of the G7 Leaders Summit is particularly addressing the topic of artificial intelligence and will be held in Apulia, on Italy’s southeast coast.
However, numerous other issues are addressed by the G7 on a continuing basis, including a commitment to promoting abortion under the common euphemism of “sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
A statement issued by G7 foreign ministers this month reiterated the G7’s devotion to ensuring “gender equality and the promotion and protection of the rights of women and girls in all their diversity as well as LGBTQIA+ persons [sic].” Each nation chairs the G7 for a year, with a wide range of issues dealt with throughout numerous meetings in the time period.
Though the Holy See is not a member of the G7 group, Meloni stated that Francis will attend “the outreach session, which is the session that is also open to other invited countries and not just the members of the G7.”
The June meeting will be attended by the leaders of the G7 countries:
- U.S. President Joe Biden
- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
- U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
- Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
- French President Emmanuel Macron
- German Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz
- Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida
In addition, the European Union’s Charles Michel and Ursula Von Der Leyen will attend, in their roles as president of the European Council and president of the European Commission.
Meloni cited the Holy See’s initiative begun in 2020, the “Rome Call for AI ethics,” which has been pioneered by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, alongside Microsoft, IBM, FAO, and the Italian Ministry of Innovation.
Together, those initial bodies behind the Rome Call for AI Ethics signed a joint document, which they said is “developed to support an ethical approach to Artificial Intelligence and promote a sense of responsibility among organizations, governments, institutions and the private sector with the aim to create a future in which digital innovation and technological progress serve human genius and creativity and not their gradual replacement.”
Since then, the supporters for the Vatican’s endeavor have grown in number to include a number of universities and foundations.
Meloni stated that Francis’ presence at the G7 meeting would serve to bring the document to the “attention of other leaders at the Apulia summit.”
“His presence brings prestige to our nation and to the entire Group of Seven,” said the Italian president, noting that it will be the first time a pope has taken part in a G7 meeting.
Continuing, Meloni cited Pope John Paul II’s 1979 address to the United Nations in New York, in which he posited political action as being centered on man in the fullness of his both spiritual and material existence. She stated:
I am convinced that the presence of His Holiness will make a decisive contribution to defining a regulatory, ethical and cultural framework for AI, because this field, the present and the future of this technology, will be another test of the ability of the international community to do what another pope, Pope St. John Paul II, talked about in his famous speech to the United Nations on October 2, 1979: “political activity, whether national or international, for in the final analysis this activity comes from man, is exercised by man and is for man.”
In recent months, the Holy See has been paying increased attention to the subject of artificial intelligence. Lately, in his message for the 2024 World Day of Peace, Francis has made vocal calls for AI to be subject to control internationally.
“I urge the global community of nations to work together in order to adopt a binding international treaty that regulates the development and use of artificial intelligence in its many form,” he wrote.