Image from trailer of the documentary biopic “Leo from Chicago.” / Credit: Vatican Media

ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 10, 2025 / 17:26 pm (CNA).

The Vatican has officially released the documentary “Leo from Chicago” about the life of Pope Leo XIV in the United States, coinciding with the sixth month of the pontificate of the first American and Peruvian pope in the history of the Catholic Church.

The documentary premiered Nov. 10 at 4 p.m. Rome time and was screened at the Vatican Film Library for journalists accredited to the Holy See Press Office. At 6 p.m. Rome time it was published on the Vatican News YouTube channels in English, Italian, and Spanish, according to a statement from the Dicastery for Communication.

The documentary was produced by the Dicastery for Communication in collaboration with the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Apostolado El Sembrador Nueva Evangelización (The Sower New Evangelization Apostolate.)

The project was led by journalists Deborah Castellano Lubov, Salvatore Cernuzio, and Felipe Herrera-Espaliat, with editing by Jaime Vizcaíno Haro. It shows various locations, including the Dolton neighborhood in suburban Chicago where the pope lived with his family, and features the memories and stories of the Holy Father’s brothers, Louis Martin and John Prevost.

Also featured are the offices, schools, and parishes run by the Augustinians, the Catholic Theological Union study center, and places frequented by Robert Prevost, such as Aurelio’s Pizza and Rate Field, the White Sox baseball stadium.

The overview includes scenes from Villanova University near Philadelphia and Port Charlotte, Florida, where the pope’s older brother lives.

The documentary features some 30 testimonies from people who knew Leo XIV in his childhood and youth; for example, when he marched in Washington, D.C., to support the pro-life cause. 

“Leo from Chicago” is the documentary that follows “Leo from Peru,” released in June, about the pope’s years in the South American country.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Paul Badde. / Credit: “EWTN News Nightly”/Screenshot

CNA Staff, Nov 10, 2025 / 16:36 pm (CNA).

Paul Badde, author of many well-known books such as “Benedict Up Close,” “The Face of God,” and “The True Icon,” died Monday morning after a long illness.

Pope Leo XIV addresses pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday Angelus on Nov. 9, 2025, at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Nov 10, 2025 / 16:06 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV warned Monday that artificial intelligence could exacerbate “antihuman ideologies” in medicine as Catholic doctors and moral theologians raise alarms about the future of AI in health care.

In a message on Nov. 10 to an international congress on “Artificial Intelligence and Medicine: The Challenge of Human Dignity,” hosted by the Pontifical Academy for Life, the pope said that ensuring “true progress” in medicine depends on keeping the dignity of every human at the forefront.

“It is easy to recognize the destructive potential of technology and even medical research when they are placed at the service of antihuman ideologies,” Leo XIV said.

Leo added that those responsible for integrating AI into medicine must remember that “health care professionals have the vocation and responsibility to be guardians and servants of human life, especially in its most vulnerable stages.”

“Indeed, the greater the fragility of human life, the greater the nobility required of those entrusted with its care,” he said.

The pope’s message came a day after another of his statements on the ethics of AI led to controversy on the social media platform X. Tech billionaire Marc Andreessen posted a mocking reference to Leo’s call on the AI industry “to develop systems that reflect justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life.” After a pileup of critical replies, Andreessen apparently deleted his own post.

Pro-life concerns over AI billing in medical insurance  

The pope’s remarks on Monday come amid growing concern among Catholic doctors about how artificial intelligence could shape access to care and respect for human dignity in health care systems worldwide.

Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann, a pediatrician and founder of My Catholic Doctor, a telehealth network that connects families seeking Catholic care with like-minded providers, told CNA she is alarmed by how insurance companies are deploying AI in the U.S.

She said AI-driven billing systems are “further pushing pro-life health care providers out of the insurance market to the self-pay market, reducing access to pro-life health care in America.”

“What I see in AI and health care is a technology arms race,” Berchelmann said. “And unfortunately, the people with the big money have higher tech, and … that’s the insurance companies. That’s United Health Care, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Elevance Health, Aetna, Cigna. … These are the companies that are putting billions into utilization management, which means denials.”

On Oct. 1, Aetna and Cigna implemented AI-automated payments nationwide, a move that has led to what critics call “downcoding,” where insurers automatically downgrade doctors’ claims to lower reimbursement levels without reviewing visit details.

“In particular, in pro-life health care, we’re seeing automatic downcoding because restorative reproductive medicine, which is health care that finds root cause of infertility and treats the root cause, takes more time than a brief workup and a referral to IVF,” Berchelmann said.

“That extended time requires a higher coding. But if I do a real quick workup, I can build a lower code for that. So the predictive AI doesn’t recognize that I’m doing a better job in finding root cause of disease,” she added.

Berchelmann said she sees “tremendous potential for AI in terms of diagnostic capacity and clinical use” and hopes predictive models will demonstrate that “pro-life health care is so much cheaper than IVF.” But for now, she said, “insurance companies, employers paying for health care, and pharmaceutical companies with insurance, are all heavily using AI to not pay for your care.” 

In his message, Pope Leo acknowledged the influence of economic interests in health care and technology. 

“Given the vast economic interests often at stake in the fields of medicine and technology, and the subsequent fight for control, it is essential to promote a broad collaboration among all those working in health care and politics that extends well beyond national borders,” the pope said.  

AI not a substitute for ‘human encounter’ in medicine 

Pope Leo underlined that “technological devices must never detract from the personal relationship between patients and health care providers.”

“If AI is to serve human dignity and the effective provision of health care, we must ensure that it truly enhances both interpersonal relationships and the care provided,” he said.

Leo described the new technological advancements brought by AI as “more pervasive” than those brought by the industrial revolution, noting their potential to alter “our understanding of situations and how we perceive ourselves and others.”

“We currently interact with machines as if they were interlocutors, and thus become almost an extension of them,” he said. “In this sense, we not only run the risk of losing sight of the faces of the people around us but of forgetting how to recognize and cherish all that is truly human.” 

The three-day Vatican conference on AI and medicine, running Nov. 10–12, is one of several in recent months addressing the ethics of AI — an issue Pope Leo XIV has signaled will be a priority in his pontificate.

At the Builders AI Forum in Rome last week, which addressed the challenge of AI for Catholics and Catholic institutions in a variety of fields, medical school professors, health care company executives, insurance company directors, medical chaplains, and entrepreneurs in the field came together to discuss and debate the future of AI in Catholic health care. 

Louis Kim, the former vice president of personal systems and AI at HP, shared that the consensus among these professionals at the end of the forum was that “AI may assist but must never substitute for human encounter [in Catholic health care] and must remain clearly identifiable as non-human so that the pastoral and sacramental integrity of care is preserved.” 

Daniel J. Daly, executive director of the Center for Theology and Ethics in Catholic Health and an associate professor of moral theology at Boston College, told CNA he is concerned that if AI models used in Catholic hospitals are only trained to maximize “efficiency and profit” it could lead to “a massive failure for Catholic health care.” 

“What I worry about is that what could happen in health care is that AI replaces that embodied witness to the kingdom of God,” Daly said. “That can never happen in Catholic health care, because Catholic health care is not just about medicine. It’s also about Jesus Christ and witnessing to his healing ministry that we see in the Scripture.” 

“I think the most important thing is that whatever the AI does, that it frees us to do the works of mercy, it doesn’t free us from the works of mercy,” he added. “That is, it doesn’t replace the embodied care and ministerial care that we provide through medicine.” 

Pope Leo XIV speaks during Mass for the opening of the general chapter of the Order of St. Augustine on Sept. 1, 2025. / Credit: Vatican Media

ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 10, 2025 / 12:08 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV has appointed a longtime confrere and friend, Nigerian priest Edward Daniang Daleng, OSA, as vice regent of the Prefecture of the Papal Household, the second-highest position in the Vatican office that organizes audiences with the pope. 

The prefecture also takes care of the preparations related to papal ceremonies, the spiritual exercises of the Holy Father, and gatherings of the College of Cardinals and the Roman Curia. Furthermore, it handles the necessary arrangements whenever the Holy Father leaves the Apostolic Palace to visit places within Rome or Italy.

Daniang has been a general councilor and, most recently, procurator general of the Order of St. Augustine — Pope Leo’s religious order. As procurator general, the priest was responsible for preparing and carrying out the order’s business with the Holy See.

Born on April 4, 1977, in Yitla’ar, Kwalla, Plateau state, in Nigeria, Daniang made his first profession in the Order of St. Augustine on Nov. 9, 2001, and his solemn vows on Nov. 13, 2004, at the age of 47.

He was ordained a priest on Sept. 10, 2005, and was awarded a doctorate in moral theology from the Pontifical Alphonsian Academy in Rome in 2012, with a thesis on “Respect for the Dignity and Care of Patients with Incurable and Terminal Illnesses.”

Daniang first met Pope Leo in 2001, when Father Robert Prevost, then prior general of the Augustinians, visited Nigeria. After moving to Rome in 2002, Daniang got to know Prevost even better.

He told Valentina Di Donato of EWTN News in August that he and Prevost have had many occasions to meet and speak over the ensuing decades.

“Something that struck me was his simplicity, his humility,” Daniang said. “That is how he was, how he is.”

Speaking to Vatican News after the election of Pope Leo XIV, Daniang also said that “Africa is in [Leo’s] heart” and that when he was prior general of the Augustinians, then-Father Prevost visited Nigeria at least 10 times.

“To understand how much my country mattered to him,” the priest continued, “just remember that after becoming prior general on his 46th birthday, Sept. 14, he was already with us in Nigeria by November.”

Valentina Di Donato, a producer in the Vatican Bureau of EWTN News, contributed to this report.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Pro-life advocates participate in a prayer procession in Regensburg, Germany. / Credit: ADF International

Regensburg, Germany, Nov 7, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).

The town lifted a 100-meter (328-foot) censorship zone around abortion clinics after courts ruled the restrictions violated constitutional freedoms.

Blessed Clemens August von Galen. / Credit: Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Münster/Domkapitular Gustav Albers (CC BY 2.5)

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 7, 2025 / 09:00 am (CNA).

Here is a roundup of Catholic world news from the past week that you might have missed.

Thousands of European scouts make a pilgrimage to France. / Credit: Illian Callé

ACI Prensa Staff, Nov 7, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

A total of 3,500 scouts and adult leaders from 13 European countries made a pilgrimage to the French town of Vézelay from Oct. 30–Nov. 2.

Then-Bishop of Verdun Jean-Paul Gusching speaks on the phone before the closing speech on the last day of the Conference des Eveques de France (French Bishops’ Conference), in Lourdes, southwestern France, on Nov. 8, 2022. / Credit: CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images

EWTN News, Nov 6, 2025 / 16:02 pm (CNA).

In a statement issued Nov. 4, the apostolic nunciature in France said it had received “information concerning relationships toward women by Bishop Jean-Paul Gusching.”

The National Council of the Slovak Republic, the national Parliament of Slovakia, in Bratislava. / Credit: Peter Zelizňák via Wikimedia (Public domain)

EWTN News, Nov 6, 2025 / 11:00 am (CNA).

Bishops and educators have raised concerns about a major education overhaul signed into law by Slovak President Peter Pellegrini.

Father Francisco José Delgado, a priest of the Archdiocese of Toledo, Spain. / Credit: Photo courtesy of “La Sacristía de la Vendée”

Madrid, Spain, Nov 6, 2025 / 10:00 am (CNA).

Father Francisco José Delgado, a member of the YouTube priests’ discussion group “The Sacristy of the Vendée,” has been declared innocent of “inciting hatred.”