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German bishops join initiative for ‘child-friendly’ artificial intelligence #Catholic The German Bishops' Conference has joined an initiative that aims to make artificial intelligence safe and suitable for children, citing Pope Leo XIVʼs call to defend human dignity in the age of AI.The initiative, called “KI kindgerecht!” (“Child-friendly AI!”), also involves Germanyʼs biggest Protestant body and an association of childrenʼs websites.“AI is already embedded in many digital applications,” said Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, who chairs the bishops' media commission, in a statement Oct. 14."With the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV gives the Church a clear mandate: In the age of artificial intelligence, we must defend human dignity — especially where children are easily exposed to danger."The initiative “combines protection, participation, and responsibility, and makes clear that digital spaces must serve the good of the child,” he said.Responsibility must not be “shifted onto parents alone,” Bätzing added. “Precisely because we know how vulnerable children are, we see it as our duty to act as advocates for this group in need of protection — in the digital space as well. Technology must serve the human person, not purely economic interests.”The Church in Germany is working with academics, educators, and interested providers on a code of conduct for child-friendly interactive AI, built on five principles: safety by design, respect for childrenʼs rights, age-appropriate spaces for participation, data protection, and human review.The bishops also said providers “must be obliged to comply with child-friendly standards” and called for lasting investment in media education so children, parents, and teachers can learn to use AI confidently.Vatican sharpens focusThe German initiative comes as the Church globally wrestles with AI and the Vatican sharpens its own focus on minors online.At its Sept. 28–Oct. 2 plenary assembly in Rome, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors examined how digital technologies, AI, and websites are used in the pastoral care of children and backed wider collaboration with international partners and Curia offices so that “the dignity, safety, and wellbeing of children remain at the heart of technological development and governance,” Vatican News reported.In March, Pope Leo XIV warned: “We must not allow children to end up believing they can find in artificial intelligence chatbots their best friends or the oracle of all knowledge, dulling their intelligence and their capacity for relationships, and numbing their creativity and thinking.” Pope Leo XIV warns children should not look to chatbots for friendship Receiving participants of a Rome conference on “The Dignity of Children and Adolescents in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” on Nov. 13, 2025, Leo also warned that “children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to manipulation through AI algorithms that can influence their decisions and preferences.”In Magnifica Humanitas, the encyclical on artificial intelligence published May 25, the pope wrote that “online phenomena such as grooming, blackmail, and the sexual exploitation of minors are not uncommon, and are made more insidious by the use of fake profiles, algorithms that facilitate dangerous contact, and AI tools capable of manipulating images and videos.”This story was first published by CNA Deutsch, the German-language sister service of EWTN News, and has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.

unitedyam October 12, 2026October 13, 2026

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‘Those who seek Christ will find him’: Another philosopher at Princeton converts to Catholicism #Catholic Noah McKay was always “at least slightly” more confident than not that God existed.The philosophy doctoral student at Princeton University recently announced his conversion to Catholicism, but he told EWTN News that he struggled for years with what he saw as uncertainties related to faith, including the problem of evil and the “problem of divine hiddenness.”McKay is the second Princeton philosophy scholar this year to convert to the Catholic faith; earlier in the summer Joe Schmid announced his own return to the faith after years of having run an agnostic-themed philosophy channel on YouTube. “I was never an atheist, and I don’t think I was ever agnostic,” McKay told EWTN News. But he experienced profound uncertainties in high school and graduate school, some of which were also related to what he described as “difficulties with the reliability and interpretation of the Bible.”While he never fully abandoned belief in God, “what firmly convinced me of theism were, first, design arguments based on the fine-tuning of physics for the emergence of life, and, second, the empirical evidence for contemporary Christian miracles,” he said. “Arguments from consciousness, moral knowledge, and natural beauty also played a role,” he added. It is perhaps unsurprising that a philosophy scholar would be drawn into the Church in part by scholarly inquiry. Schmid told EWTN News shortly after his conversion, for instance, that “contingency arguments” helped convince him of God’s existence.McKay, meanwhile, cited “evidence for vindicatory Catholic miracles” as helping lead him to the Catholic Church specifically. Those miracles “presuppose distinctive teachings of the Catholic Church,” he pointed out, and the evidence for them, he argued, is “as good or better than the evidence for the more generically Christian miracles” in which McKay himself already believed. He told EWTN News that out of the necessity of consistency he felt he needed to either accept all of those Catholic miracles or reject all of them. “And the evidence was too strong for rejecting all of them to be reasonable!” he said. The evidence for those miracles wasn’t the only thing that convinced him of the truth of the Catholic faith, he said, but “it did motivate me to look into the history and theology of the Church more carefully,” and the evidence he found for Catholicism was “very strong.” He urged those considering Catholicism for the first time, or those who are considering returning to it, to start with researching those miracles.Speaking to Catholic YouTube apologist Cameron Bertuzzi in a recent interview, McKay argued that “if you already accept that Christianity is true, the inference to Catholicism is irresistible.” He admitted that his decision to join the Church caused his close friends and family “distress” given his Protestant background. But “I think Catholicism — if you’re fully informed, if you’re really considering all of the evidence — I think Catholicism is basically going to be irresistible,” he said. Speaking to EWTN News, he also urged potential converts and reverts: “Pray!” “I found praying the rosary especially helpful when I was discerning Catholicism,” he said. “Just ask God to help you earnestly seek the truth and make the means of discovering it available. Those who seek Christ, earnestly and prayerfully, will find him.” “I’m going to ask God to make himself known to everyone who reads this article!” he added.

NASA’s Quesst Mission Marks X-59’s Historic First Flight – NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft lifts off for its first flight Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, from U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. The aircraft’s first flight marks the start of flight testing for NASA’s Quesst mission, the result of years of design, integration, and ground testing and begins a new chapter in NASA’s aeronautics research legacy.