Idea for Pope Leo: A Holy Year for a Moment of Truth

Pope Leo XIV coat of arms, motto: “In the One, We are One”

Imaginary and hypothetical, written seriously and wistfully:

MEMORANDUM

To: His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV

From: Bill Schmitt | “Phronesis in Pieces”

Re: Proposal for a new Holy Year

Date: June 30, 2025

This memo proposes that you declare 2026 a “Holy Year of Communion and Communication” for the Catholic Church. The goal is to help meet the world’s urgent need for providential renewal in societal structures of fellowship. Institutions of human flourishing now face moments of crisis. Our connections to natural law, the Holy Spirit’s gifts and fruits, and Jesus Christ as “way, truth, and life” are clogged with static, portending a detachment which is spiritual and secular, individual and collective.

A new Holy Year to address this will be a coherent, efficacious extension of the ongoing 2025 Holy Year which bears Pope Francis’s theme, “Pilgrims of Hope.” The Church, as a communion or communio, is in the vanguard of unity for the human journey; as witnesses to hope, we must build stronger bridges of wholeness and holiness amid the diversity, keeping personal and civic life strong.

Here is a three-part assessment of “communion and communication” as essentials in the bridge-building process: First, a look at today’s threats to connectedness as recently reported in our mass media. Second, a few considerations of how the Church might assist Catholics and all people in responding to the threats. Third, more detailed proposals for a new Holy Year as a hope-filled initiative.

Incommunicado: “Things fall apart …”

• A discussion of “The Future of Reading” published by First Things on June 24 reminded us that many people around the world are losing the skills for “deep literacy.” Extended engagement with substantive texts and thoughts is replaced by quickly consumed visual or verbal fragments. Shallow rhetoric fixates us for purposes of greed, pride, and manipulation, eroding our attention spans and minimizing intimate contact among communicators who customarily thrive on sharing their thoughts.

• A June 10 commentary in The Free Press warned us that “Our Knowledge Systems Have Collapsed.” The writer, Ted Gioia, pointed out many danger signals. For example, scientific studies published in journals often “don’t replicate” when the original findings are tested again; the headlined results grab us as clickbait, but follow-up corrections go unnoticed. Paradoxically, research that is less likely to be true is cited more. Gioia also warned plagiarism is spreading at every level of scholarly work, and clear violations of intellectual property suffer no penalty. The currency of trust and diligence is losing its value.

• In a video posted June 12, public intellectual Jordan Peterson explored how the internet is “breaking our brains.” Immersed in a flood of invalid information, many news consumers casually fortify their confirmation bias, ignoring the complicated truths which conscientious people verify and share through investments of time and effort. The “postmodernist world” is a place of plentiful customized “truths” but “no uniting metanarrative” to hold cultures together, Peterson observed. People become unable to prioritize any facts as more valid or more important. The “God-shaped holes” left vacant in postmodern hearts are too easily filled by “false gods” of secular assumptions.

• “People are losing the ability to hold a conversation, to talk and listen to each other,” AI expert Yuval Noah Harari (author of Sapiens) said in an interview last October. Social media algorithms tend to dissuade us from open collaboration by sowing greed, hatred, and fear in much of what we say and do. A growing number of dialogues, online and off, also seem to be rife with vulgarities. This coarseness may signal heightened anger and anxiety among participants, or it may reflect a “scorched-earth” disdain for the perceived triviality of sharing facts—details which some people neither acknowledge nor care about it.

• “AI Slop” is the name given to a new plague of potentially misleading pictures and videos whose so-called value is twofold—as a sort of empty, eye-grabbing entertainment and as a money-maker for some image instigators if their fake product “goes viral.” The New York Times reported on June 11 that, because search engine companies are eager to support AI, “it appears that vast quantities of information generated by machines, rather than largely curated by humans, will be served up as a daily part of life on the internet for the foreseeable future.” Objective reality is under assault.

• Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed the “Godfather of AI” said in a mid-June podcast that, between 2023 and 2024, the number of cyberattacks around the world increased by 1,200 percent. AI enables malevolent users to mimic people’s appearances and voices to gain private data. Spam trickery is akin to “deep fakes.” You are among those being falsely replicated, Holy Father. Such strategies risk societal confusion, even geopolitical havoc.

• Those governments starting to regulate AI generally exempt military uses from the rules, according to Hinton. Autonomous lethal weapons are on the drawing boards; they will further mute the scrutiny of moral conscience in wartime. Cyberwarfare and cyberterrorism, not to mention the digital world’s capacities for propaganda, disinformation, and radicalization, are growing threats to peacemaking and the humane art of diplomacy.

• The Pew Research Center has estimated that two-thirds of all tweeted URL links are suspected of originating with “bots,” not human sources. Deceptive websites and postings are mass-produced internationally, usually to increase polarization and blinding emotion. Many credible professionals in all sorts of communication projects fear being replaced when employers opt to compose content artificially.

• Pope Francis made numerous remarks about the need for young people, who are already prone to anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, to make less use of their omnipresent screens. In March, the Penn State department of applied social psychology posted a call to rein in media violence. Adolescents, “reportedly glued to various media for an average of 7.5 hours a day,” lose first-hand attentiveness to reality, as well as harmonious time for formation with family, friends, and their faith.

Setting the stage for meaningful interactions

Most Holy Father, we need to reassert the Church’s perennial presence as a secure vessel for today’s pilgrims of hope, helping them navigate toward an eternity of divine love. The whole “family of God” shares a “communion of goods”—holy things and holy persons—which bear fruit for all in “faith, hope, and charity.”

The communion of goods contains immense archives of writing and other artistry from dedicated seekers of truth; such material, from Church sages and many other sources, must be kept intact so it can be available to nourish minds and hearts, perhaps as a response or antidote for destructive lies.

Just as churches, in Pope Francis’s words, should be “field hospitals” for wounded souls, we can provide a lifeboat for wayfarers and whole cultures, with their various religions and roots, who fear they’re losing their moorings of reason and faith. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paras. 946-962)

Post-modern culture can persuade people their lives have minimal purpose or agency. It gives them little reason to believe that looking beyond themselves is the key to identity, knowledge, love, or happiness. The Church should help communicate to isolated souls the “transcendentals” of Aristotle and Plato—ultimate truth, beauty, and goodness—which speak of a loving home, a north star, nurturing our souls.

Catholics believe exploration of history and mystery frees people to seek wisdom together, transcending the clutter of data. Your papal motto affirms St. Augustine’s zeal for communication which discerns: “In the One, we are one.” We see our pilgrimage yielding the fullness of solidarity through a sacramental life of Reconciliation and Holy Communion, but our Eucharistic sacrifice “intercedes for all men” in the family of creation. (CCC, para. 1368)

Spiritual wisdom is taught and learned in experiential, analog ways. Machines which do not distinguish between true and false, good and bad, can help us in wonderful ways, but they cannot be wise if they lack wonder. Nor can they imitate the human mind’s ability to share in God’s creativity, sparking imagination and joy. AI’s supposed potential for consciousness is likely to be a pretense, a half-step, or a disaster.

The pre-requisites for our human communication, such as truth and trust, authenticity and dignity, and accountability to generate justice and compassion, have been presumed—but also debased—by new technologies and styles of interaction.

Societies which have become more polarized, mean-spirited, and self-centered through misuse of communication tools need evangelization with Good News.

Participants in the misuse also need forgiveness—personal conversion and reconciliation we can spread to others. This source of renewal disappears when media messengers prefer “cancellation” of offenders, either because empathy demands too much of a relationship or because the “facts” behind disputes are exposed as flimsy.

It seems necessary to redouble the Church’s efforts to guide people, products, and practices toward more fruitful communication in the secular sphere. Pope Francis provided inspiration for this by his own initiatives and through his simple statement in a World Communications Day message: “Love always communicates.” In other messages, he added that we must communicate truth gently, with charity.

This mix of compassion and candor is the Church’s persistent work, trusting in the inspirations and initiatives of holy years and all its ministries.

A Holy Year: Formulating an initiative

Holy Father, if you choose to declare a Holy Year of Communion and Communication, the concerns discussed above can carry weight, but you will want to structure specific prayers and conversations in alignment with your priorities.

As part of the structure, dioceses around the world can become instruments for synodality in a mission-driven context. We have much to talk about at local community levels where neighbors witness what binds or divides. Local faith leaders will make friends—and make news—as authentic authorities supporting dialogues residents really care about and which secular leaders might distort or dismiss.

Your concern about developments in artificial intelligence which are profit- and power-driven—not “person-centered” as Pope Francis frequently urged—is a prime subject deserving short-term and long-term planning. Officials and experts working in the AI fields will benefit from hearing the Church’s insights, including moral conscience-checks and cautionary notes which tech-optimists often ignore.

You have spoken about the need for more rigorous formation of people in the media audience. In particular, Christians must develop both their faith and reason for critical thinking and careful assessment; we should subject our ravenous content consumption to a sober cost-benefit analysis and a healthy dose of skepticism toward excesses and extremes.

This skepticism starts with an abiding passion to take reality seriously and to honor the dignity of persons by telling them full truths which will “set them free.” In light of Francis’s World Communications Day messages, people should also embrace the value of authentic, instructive stories— learning first from Scripture and Church teaching, then sharing their own experiences in imitation of Jesus the great storyteller.

We must not close our minds, but there is a danger in passive open-mindedness—consuming endless information but never coming to conclusions which entail earthly and spiritual accountability. As famed author G.K. Chesterton said, “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”

A Holy Year: In keeping with tradition

The “Holy Year of Communion and Communication” is intended as a time to accept our responsibilities. It allows people to seek and receive divine guidance, with all the spiritual priorities and sacramental practices grounded in Church tradition.

As you know, the origin of Christian Jubilees, or Holy Years, traces back to the Bible, Vatican documents tell us a Catholic holy year is “a great religious event” to “encourage holiness of life,” marked by calls to reconciliation between adversaries, as well as “solidarity, hope, justice, commitment to serve God with joy and … peace with our brothers and sisters.”

Popes have proclaimed such events since 1300, and initial plans called for a jubilee every one-hundred years. That has shifted to every twenty-five years.

A jubilee is called “ordinary” if it falls “after the set period of years.” The current holy year of hope keeps this pattern. But popes also proclaim “extraordinary” jubilees, as Pope Francis did in 2016 when he declared a holy year of mercy.

Holy Father, given your special affinity with Pope Leo XIII, you know that he issued an encyclical declaring an “extraordinary jubilee” in 1886. According to this papal champion for faith and justice in the Industrial Revolution’s swiftly evolving economies, “the spirit of the age” required a holy year to propagate the Church’s “treasures of heavenly gifts.”

Leo XIII was a prolific writer and teacher to elites and the grassroots populace, reminding everyone “how important it is” that societies “conform as closely as possible to truth and the Christian ideal.”

If you proclaim a holy year in 2026, this “extraordinary” period will occur 140 years after the former Pope Leo’s special year of jubilee. One might say those prayers bore great fruit, including the landmark encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which Leo issued in 1891. It presented a resounding explication of Catholic Social Thought, prescribing just relations between capital and labor as a bulwark against economic “progress” gone astray.

The new jubilee will be a powerful answer to the dangers of our current secularized age, when warp-speed “progress” is creating dilemmas of justice, prudence, and much more. Today’s revolutions in technologies, economies, warfare, and cultures have much to answer for, given humanity’s cravings for the sharing of communio and meaningful communication.

A Holy Year: Extraordinary and expansive

A holy year in 2026 would appear to be the first time that jubilees were proclaimed in two consecutive years. However, one is “ordinary” and one is “extraordinary,” and there is flexibility in the “where” and “when” of special declarations.

Holy Father, one can draw a through-line connecting Pope Francis’s 2025 summons for “pilgrims of hope” to the event proposed here. Years of follow-through will traverse serious, even existential, crossroads where travelers must be organized and diligent.

As wayfarers seeking to fulfill the divine potential of personhood, we must “up our game” as human beings competing against deception and debasement—forces growing along the very pathways on which we’re sprinting.

Many religious and secular people alike say candidly they believe today’s cultural wounds need healing via a decisive return to God. We can say “Amen” with confidence and no reliance on AI.

Hope is here. You know of the recent evolution in Catholic seminary formation for priestly discernment; you have seen that many young men now report great blessings from their first year of preparation. This “propadeutic year,” with its rigorous but liberating structure, has revealed a noteworthy blessing.

An initiative that should inspire the secular world is the seminarians’ “media fast,” when cell phones and casual internet use are largely precluded for weeks, months, or a full year. This quietude often boosts a person’s ability for authentic friendships, reflection, community, and communication—with God and with others. One can imagine an imminent future when diverse people prize priests’ guidance more than ever because of their clarity of mind and heart, free of technology addiction.

You have also lived many years with the people of Peru, where the U.S. immersion in electronic distractions and entertainment binges does not dominate culture. This fresher air is obviously no guarantee against societal turmoil, but it must have heartened you to see Peruvians better able to find hope and joy in Christ and community.

Conclusion … and beginning

Like Leo XIII, you can help illuminate “the way” toward life-changing, divine perspectives that unmask secular utopias of unerring social progress.

For all the reasons above, please see the “Holy Year of Communion and Communication” as a long-term gift you are well-suited to give. It will put hope into action during a moment of truth for all God’s people.

In one sense, “moment of truth” points to a crisis. The Lord’s graces and the Church’s spirit of unity are needed around the world in this era of disconnection and moral urgency.

In another sense, “moment of truth” points to an opportunity. This ongoing mission to unwrap and protect God’s unique gifts to every person is a celebration of reality. It will remind us why and how to keep transcendent, healing, powerful truthfulness in motion.

We can reassure our brothers and sisters that man’s plans, aligned with God’s will, can reshape difficult realities even as we ask for the grace to transcend them.

The People of God await an extraordinary period in 2026 and beyond for following Jesus into a spiritual battle against artificiality and division—as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. This is a mission to communicate peace through better formation and information, advancing the safekeeping of our connectedness and communion.

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A light-hearted addendum—Here’s one way to look at a Holy Year of Communion and Communication. It must be attributed to AI via Microsoft Bing, based on my suggestion.

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