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The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has published a Cabrini Pledge card, named after St. Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917), an Italian immigrant who became the United States’ first canonized saint.

The Cabrini Pledge entails seven commitments, including “to affirm, in word and deed, the inherent dignity of every person, regardless of immigration status or country of origin, seeing each as a child of God before all else,” and “to encourage civic dialogue that places the human person and the sanctity of families at the center of policymaking, especially toward the end of meaningful immigration reform.”

The prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication and the secretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education discussed artificial intelligence (AI) at a conference organized by the Pontifical University of Salamanca and the International Federation of Catholic Universities.

“We must not entrust to artificial intelligence human decisions that have to do with morality and the ability to discern good from evil,” said Paolo Ruffini, the lay prefect of the Dicastery for Communication.

“No algorithm can ever replace the beauty of human encounters in the sharing of knowledge,” Ruffini added. “We must mend the rift that is growing between contemporary life and the Gospel message, between the civilization of machines, of communication, and Christian civilization.”

Bishop Paul Tighe of the Dicastery for Culture and Education warned against “blindly letting ourselves be guided” by AI results. “There is always an opinion and a direction within the algorithm.”

Addressing a UN Human Rights Council meeting on the massacre in El Fasher, Sudan, a Vatican diplomat said that “Catholic-run clinics, schools and community centers in conflict zones have either been forced to close or are operating under extreme duress.”

“Their staff, many of whom are volunteers, face daily threats, and many have been displaced,” said Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland. “In order to bring an end to the current levels of violence, Sudan requires both sustained humanitarian aid and immediate diplomatic efforts.”

The Rapid Support Forces, a belligerent in the Sudanese civil war, perpetrated the massacre.

Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, delivered a lecture on November 13 in Florence on “The Nuclear Menace: New Scenarios of Risk and the Commitment of Christians.”

“The idea of ​​building peace on the threat of total destruction or on the illusion that stability can derive from a mutual possibility of annihilation” is “morally indefensible and strategically unsustainable,” said Archbishop Gallagher.

“A balance based on terror and mutual demonstrations of force,” he said, “can in no way guarantee authentic peace; on the contrary, it contributes to increasing the risk and destructive scope of a potential conflict.”

The prelate also warned of “an accelerated arms race accompanied by renewed, sometimes frenetic, efforts to expand existing arsenals and their destructive capabilities.”