At first glance, the photograph appeared to be just another routine moment from the red carpet, the kind of image that would normally flash across news screens and vanish within hours. President Donald Trump was standing outside, presumably waiting for an event to begin, when a military flyover roared overhead. In the official Getty Images photograph, the moment is not particularly flattering. His face is caught in a grimace, his eyes squinting, his mouth tightened in an involuntary reaction to the sudden noise. And there, in plain view, are his hands—both of them covered in white gloves. But the version…

In the quiet, hallowed halls of the Apostolic Palace, where the weight of centuries presses down upon every fresco and echoing corridor, a decidedly modern warning has been issued that ripples far beyond the marble floors of the Vatican. Pope Leo, the spiritual shepherd to over a billion Catholics worldwide, has stepped firmly into the digital arena with a message that is as urgent as it is sobering: artificial intelligence, the dazzling and terrifying achievement of our age, is quietly but relentlessly amplifying the age-old scourge of false information. It is not that technology itself is intrinsically evil, the Pope…