An image online shows priests worshiping in a cathedral choir in front of a goat-headed Baphomet statue. However, the photograph, which circulated on social media as alleged evidence of a satanic cult in the Vatican underground, was taken by artificial intelligence. The Irish news site’s fact-checking team The Review debunked the fake image, noting that it had racked up more than 50,000 views on Facebook and Instagram.

This latest AI-enhanced conspiracy theory is reminiscent of a recent catechesis by Pope Francis on Satan and “modern technology.” During his weekly general audience on September 25, the pope criticized Freud’s idea that the devil is only a metaphor for our repressed desires – expressions of our neuroses, our unconscious and our death drives.

“Today we are witnessing a strange phenomenon concerning the devil. At a certain cultural level, it is considered that it simply does not exist. It would be a symbol of the collective unconscious, or of alienation; in short, a metaphor. But “the devil’s most clever trick is to persuade you that he does not exist,” as someone (Charles Baudelaire) wrote,” said the Pope, commenting on the Gospel of Matthew (4, 1).

Through the window

What Pope Francis borrows from Charles Baudelaire is perhaps more than just a phrase. In his famous collection, “Paris Spleen” (or “Short poems in prose), published in 1869, the poet envisaged the progress defended by the Enlightenment as the discovery of an unexpected ally in “His Highness” – the name Baudelaire gives to Satan. “(His Highness) assured me that he himself was most invested in the destruction of superstitions,” Baudelaire wrote. “And he admitted that he had felt fear for his own power only once – when he heard a preacher, more subtle than his peers, exclaim from the pulpit: “My brothers , never forget, when you hear the praise of the progress of the Enlightenment, that the devil’s greatest trick is to convince you that he does not exist!’

Opposition to the Enlightenment has somewhat gone out of fashion. Yet, like Baudelaire, the pope’s demonology also criticizes modernity. During the general audience, Francis warned of the dangers of “modern technology”: “Modern technology, for example, in addition to the many positive resources that must be appreciated, also offers countless means to “give opportunity be damned” and many fail. in the trap. He stressed the importance of online pornography as an example, describing it as “a thriving market” hidden behind the Internet.

Contrary to the Enlightenment dream of a society “liberated” from belief and governed by reason, “our technological and secularized world is full of magicians, occultists, spiritualists, astrologers, sellers of spells and amulets , and unfortunately real satanic sects,” Pope Francis said. said. “Handed out, the devil came in, one might say, through the window. Driven out of the faith, he returns with superstition.

And this increasingly involves artificial intelligence.