Pope Leo XIV on AI art and artists’ livelihoods
Pope Leo XIV called for the Church to renew its alliance with artists. The question is how that recognition reaches the conditions artists need to keep working.
On 2 October 2026, Pope Leo XIV addressed participants in “The Art of Possibility: Weaving Together,” an encounter promoted by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education. He described art as a place of listening to human aspirations and wounds, and warned that, in the age of search engines, a great danger is not only censorship but homogenization.
Speaking about artificial intelligence, Leo said it had become “urgent to distinguish human art from what is produced by machines.” He described an “ontological difference” between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation, and said the Church wished to “renew its alliance with artists and cultural institutions.” Read the Vatican News report of the address.
The remarks concern a particular gathering and a particular question about human art. They do not settle every use of AI. They do ask what a society chooses to support when it says that artists are necessary to spiritual and cultural life.
Artists belong in the choices that shape society
Shona Neary, an artist and the founder of Countercult, describes the starting point this way:
Artists are a reflection of humanity and should be more of an intentional choice when it comes to sustainable economics and societal and spiritual health.
Her Sketchy Shona Journal article What stays human when life is filtered through systems develops the human side of that question. It records an artist using digital tools while refusing to treat technology and nature as opposites.
A spiritual calling still has material costs
Shona also describes the gap between the spiritual role of art and the material life an artist has to sustain:
I mean, the Countercult Fund is one idea for a solution. Otherwise, as an artist, I realize that I have an innate calling that aligns with the spiritual, but I also need to exist within the confines of society, namely taxes, rent, health insurance, and, of course, putting food on the table.
In What I build when the feed is not enough, Shona writes about building “rooms, records, objects and routes” so the work can live beyond a feed, with the time and context an artist archive needs. The writing connects digital systems to the conditions around an artist’s actual work, rather than treating technology as a substitute for it.
The Countercult Fund is one route, not a complete answer
The Countercult Fund is one way to connect a specific business or place-based brief with funded cultural work. For each brief, the cultural contribution, professional fees, artist budget, and payment process are agreed. It is not a pooled endowment or an automatic levy on everyday sales, and it cannot by itself cover rent, insurance, or every cost an artist carries. Its practical role is to make cultural work and its budget explicit within a defined project.
Pope Leo’s remarks speak about the place of art in spiritual and social life. The Countercult question is how that recognition reaches budgets, commissioning, and the conditions artists need to continue working. A Fund can address one part of that question; the wider work remains.
editorial process: This Countercult Journal article was assembled from Shona Neary’s supplied reflections and published Sketchy Shona writing, with AI assistance for structure and editing. Shona’s quoted words are preserved with spelling and punctuation corrections. Pope Leo XIV’s remarks are sourced to the linked Vatican News report.
editorial process: Our Journals are pulled from our writings over the years to get information out as quickly and as widely as possible, and to get to what matters: finding each other and claiming our seat in the circular economy. Some ideas overlap between Shona Neary's work on cultural infrastructure and their artist practice as Sketchy Shona. AI is a tool for infrastructure, not for creating Journal writing or artists' work. We welcome original reporting and pitches from journalists and independent publishers.
This piece was informed by Shona Neary’s writing, conversations, and thinking around independent culture, artists, and place.