The Catholic Message Board

This spring, the Vatican will debut a simultaneous translation system assisted by artificial intelligence, allowing people to follow liturgical celebrations in St. Peter’s Basilica in real time in up to 60 languages. For the first time, the faithful will be able to follow the liturgy in their own language via their smartphones.
The service will operate directly in the device’s browser, without the need to download any applications or use any accessories. In this way, Mass attendees will be able to understand the readings, chants, and prayers in their own language as the celebration unfolds.
The new system is designed to be easy to use. QR codes will be placed at the entrances and designated points within the church, allowing users to connect to a website where they can follow the liturgy with real-time translation, in both audio and text formats.
The system relies on the simultaneous interpretation capabilities of Lara, an artificial intelligence developed by Translated, a world leader in AI-based language solutions, in collaboration with Carnegie-AI LLC, a company specializing in simultaneous interpretation technologies.
Antonio Autorino, head of communications at the Fabric of St. Peter, confirmed to ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language sister service of EWTN News, that the service will be operational this spring. For now, tests have already begun with selected groups of the faithful to assess its functionality.
The initiative, spearheaded by the Fabric of St. Peter in collaboration with the Dicastery for Communication and the technology company Translated, was presented Feb. 16 by the archpriest of the basilica, Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, along with a series of liturgical initiatives and cultural projects in which technology has played a crucial role.
https://www.ewtnnews.com/vatican/vatica ... -real-time

What could possibly go wrong?

Highlander wrote: ↑Sat Feb 21, 2026 12:34 am What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing except occasional bad translations but it is not as if human translations are necessarily any better.

The thing that amazes me about this alarmist "AI is evil and will destroy all humanity" mentality is that it is identical to the alarmist "computers are evil and will destroy all humanity" mentality that ruled from the 50s through the mid 90s. It wasn't that long ago that people were warning against computers; alarmist movies like Wargames and 2001: A Space Odyssey were all about how computers would kill us all. And there were a lot of alarmist movies and a lot of alarmist novels warning about the dangers of computers. And according to one book I read on the subject, the alarmism got so bad they even made a movie about a computer that raped a women, although how it could do that I don't know.

And for a long time, people were terrified of the horrifying consequences that would surely result if a computer could defeat the World Chess Champion. This finally happened in 1997 when the IBM computer Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov. What were the horrifying consequences? Nothing. All we learned is that computers had finally exceeded the computational power of the human brain, which, if they couldn't do that, would make them pretty useless.

I think the "computers will kill us all" mentality finally passed for good when the mythical "Y2K bug" turned out to be nothing, and it wasn't billions trying to make computers "Y2K compliant", because entire countries like Russia, China and India that did absolutely nothing, passed through Y2K unscathed as well.

I for one welcome our new AI translator overlords.

I mean, it isn't as if Mass is predictable, following a set before hand text that could, say, be printed ahead of time in many languages in a book like a missal, right? This must be some genius ai to figure out what is being said.

I'm sure that helps. The homily would be the hardest part.

Advance copy.

Rather than rely upon biased non-AI speculation, I am demanding inclusivity and, so, have invited an AI to participate in this exchange, speaking, as 'twere, for itself. From the Greek, it offered an AI voice, keen and illustrative, proving that nothing can possibly go wrong with AI translations. Oh, and to ease the transition, explanatory comments have been included.

Please bow you heads and repeat:

The Lord’s Prayer (Postcolonial, Intersectional)

Our Parent/Source—non-gendered, relationally constituted, and situated in the heavens (understood as a multiplicity of non-exclusionary spatialities),
let your name be hallowed—i.e., recognized as sacred through communal, justice-oriented meaning-making practices.

Let your basileia emerge—
not as a vertical monarchy but as a radically redistributed, non-coercive commons;
let your will come into being—on earth as in the heavens—
through participatory, consent-based enactment rather than imposed sovereignty.

Give us today our epiousios bread—
variously interpreted as “for today,” “for tomorrow,” or “for ongoing being”—
that is, material sustenance sufficient for collective thriving,
produced without exploitation and shared in equitable distribution.

And release us from our opheilēmata—
debts, obligations, and entanglements in systems of extraction and harm—
as we, too, engage in iterative practices of releasing our debtors,
centering restoration over punishment and accountability over erasure.

And do not bring us into peirasmos—
conditions of testing, precarity, or destabilization that expose vulnerability to domination—
but rescue/liberate us from tou ponērou:
whether construed as the Evil One, emergent harm, or the totalizing logics of structural injustice.

Because yours is the basileia—reimagined as an anti-imperial, decolonized commons—
and the power—understood as collectively held capacity rather than unilateral control—
and the glory—decentered, non-extractive, and shared across the whole community—
into the ages of ages: an ongoing, open-ended horizon of becoming.

Amen (a communal affirmation of consent and alignment).