Panel: CREATION AND ECOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION OF THEOLOGY



299.3 - FROM ST FRANCIS TO POPE FRANCIS: SACRED STEWARDSHIP IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AUTHORS:
Strumble N. (DCU - Dublin City University ~ Dublin ~ Ireland)
Text:
The Anthropocene compels a renewed examination of Christian responsibility for our "common home" amid climate disruption, biodiversity loss, and intensifying resource scarcity. From Saint Francis of Assisi to Pope Francis, the Christian tradition has articulated a vision of sacred stewardship grounded in praise, humility, and creaturely kinship. Today, that vision must be reinterpreted in light of artificial intelligence (AI), whose rapid development marks an epochal transformation in human creativity and responsibility. This paper situates AI within the framework of integral ecology proposed in Laudato Si' and extended in Antiqua et Nova. While AI offers significant promise for ecological stewardship, through climate modelling, precision agriculture, and optimised energy systems, its environmental footprint is substantial, relying on energy-intensive computation, vast water usage, and extractive supply chains. Technological innovation thus risks intensifying the crises it seeks to address. Ethically, the deployment of AI must resist a "technocratic paradigm" that prioritises efficiency over human dignity and biodiversity. Theological reflection warns against "digital reductionism," urging that AI remain a tool to complement, not replace, human moral discernment and relational intelligence. Furthermore, the "digital divide" risks concentrating technological benefits among the privileged while the "cry of the poor" goes unheard in marginalised regions. Engaging these tensions, this paper calls for an ecological and hermeneutical conversion that reorders technological development toward human dignity, social justice, and the flourishing of all creatures. Sacred stewardship in the age of AI demands a wisdom of the heart, aligning human creativity with God's transforming impulse, so that both natural and artificial systems serve life in abundance on a finite Earth.