A Catholic tech start-up is offering ‘conversations’ with AI-generated saints — while theologians warn of the spiritual risks such tools might pose.

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St. Augustine of Hippo lived eight centuries before St. Thomas Aquinas and never met him — at least not on this side of heaven.

But imagine, if you will, that these two doctors of the Church both walked into a room and commenced a dialogue on matters of faith, with you seated comfortably nearby as an observer. What would they discuss, and how would each respond?

Concocting such a transcript could be a worthwhile exercise for a scholar or student, as doing so would require a deep understanding of each saint’s writings, thought and historical context. But could artificial intelligence ever be capable of producing such a conversation?

Magisterium AI is attempting just that.

Magisterium, a project of the Catholic start-up Longbeard, is an AI product focused on making Church teaching and Catholic insight more accessible. The interface is similar to other “generative” AI websites, such as ChatGPT. But unlike ChatGPT, Magisterium is trained only on Catholic sources, and its creators aim to feed it every piece of Catholic knowledge ever created, with the goal of making that knowledge ultimately searchable and accessible for anyone on the internet.

Magisterium’s newest project, “Saint Chat,” can generate text-based responses to questions from avatars of saints such as St. Paul, St. Augustine and St. Jerome. The program is set to launch within Magisterium AI in September with avatars of 20 saints, popes and Church doctors initially available.

A demo shared with the Register shows the tool in action. A user types and sends a query to an avatar of St. Thomas Aquinas: “What would you say about human dignity in a technological age?”

“My child,” the four-paragraph reply from the blinking saintly avatar commences, “though I lived in a time far removed from your ‘technological age,’ the truth about human dignity remains constant, for it is rooted not in the fleeting advancements of man, but in the eternal wisdom of God.”

Saint Chat also includes a “debate mode” where users can stage a dialogue between two saints, with a third saint acting as judge. Each response comes with citations, but the program warns in a small disclaimer at the bottom of the screen: “Magisterium AI’s responses are not always perfect. When in doubt, consult a human.”

Texting with long-deceased Catholic saints is a novel and potentially exciting idea, to be sure — but in an age where Catholics are still vigorously debating the dangers and opportunities that AI presents, several Catholic philosophers contacted by the Register expressed concerns about the spiritual dangers inherent in a tool like Saint Chat.

Matthew Harvey Sanders, the founder and CEO of Longbeard, admitted that there was some considerable debate internally at Longbeard about the wisdom and prudence of creating a program that essentially impersonates the saints.

Sanders, speaking to the Register, stressed that a “conversation” with an AI saint could never replace a genuine, prayerful conversation with a saint in heaven — nor does it intend to.

“In this whole realm of Catholic AI, there’s a real risk of leading people astray. We take that very seriously,” Sanders said.

“But at the same time, I think there was enthusiasm that this [Saint Chat] should exist, that this would be a lot of fun. So in that respect, I think there was a lot of enthusiasm from the team for pushing something like this out there.”

Another major factor, Sanders said, is the fact that Catholics are already turning to secular AI chatbots, like ChatGPT and Character.AI, to “chat” with the saints. Sanders said that because the AI models of these secular sites often don’t have access to the entirety of a saint’s works and aren’t programmed with a Catholic ethical framework, there’s a far greater possibility of error, misrepresentation or misdirection.

The opportunity was there for a “Catholic” AI company to build something better, and Sanders said he suspected that if Magisterium didn’t do it, another Catholic AI company would.

For Sanders and his team, the hope is that Saint Chat opens new ways to encounter the wisdom of the saints — while taking care not to displace authentic relationships, prayer or the sacraments.

“We hope it will provide people an opportunity to dialogue with saints in a way that they’ve never been able to before,” Sanders said. 

 How Does It Work?

In creating the Saint Chat avatars, Magisterium had the complex task of accurately simulating the personalities and teachings of Catholic saints — many of whom left behind considerable bodies of work but lived hundreds of years ago.

Another challenge, Sanders said, was striking a balance between providing enough information to create an authentic experience without crossing into anachronistic territory — ensuring a saint doesn’t unknowingly reference events that occurred after his or her lifetime, for example.

The team first fed the AI model each saint’s collected written works, coupled with biographical facts about the saint’s life, along with information about what other important Catholics have said about the saint’s significance. For a variety of reasons, the only avatars available are deceased figures, to avoid confusion with the living.

Sanders said he hopes Saint Chat will provide a novel way for people who aren’t familiar with a particular saint to get to know them — not only through the saints’ writings, but also through simulated interactions that capture their personalities. This could be particularly beneficial in educational settings, he said, where students might find it more engaging to learn about theological concepts through simulated “conversation” rather than traditional study.

Additionally, he said, the project has implications for theological research, as it could help to uncover new avenues of inquiry that human researchers may not have yet considered.

Eventually, once it’s “battle-tested,” Saint Chat will be available for Catholic apostolates to make use of through Magisterium’s application programming interface (API), allowing Catholics worldwide to be able to directly use Saint Chat to build their own apps.

Of course, Catholics can already converse with the saints through intercessory prayer. Paragraph 956 of the Catechism notes that those who dwell in heaven, the saints, are “closely united to Christ” and listen to us with “fraternal concern.”

That said, imagined dialogues between Christian figures are nothing new. As a rhetorical and pedagogical device, Catholic writers such as Peter Kreeft have produced numerous Socratic-style imagined dialogues between philosophers and Christians.

And naturally, the writers of any dramatic presentation of a saint’s life, such as EWTN’s recent movie depicting the life of St. John Vianney, must use their best judgment, based on research, to craft imagined “dialogue” from historical saints to the best of their ability. The long-running EWTN television program “Saints vs. Scoundrels,” which premiered in 2014, features carefully crafted imagined speech delivered by actors portraying historical figures, many of them Catholic saints, in dialogue with non-Catholic thinkers.

In many ways, Saint Chat resembles these existing spiritual works of imagination. The novelty — and risk — lies in the use of AI.

Vatican Guidance and Concerns

In the few short years since such technology became widely available, Catholic observers and scholars of AI have spoken out in unambiguous terms against the anthropomorphizing of AI systems — cautioning that AI should be treated only like the tool it is and not as a replacement for true human interaction.

Under the late Pope Francis, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) in January released a note on AI, Antiqua et Nova, which warned that turning to AI for deep human relationships, companionship or affection, rather than fostering genuine connections with other human beings and God, risks replacing authentic relationality with a “lifeless simulacrum.”

Getting too deep into AI companionship will lead to “profound and melancholic dissatisfaction in interpersonal relationships, or harmful isolation,” the DDF went on to caution. Authentic human relationships, which include sharing pain, needs and joy — things AI can only simulate — are indispensable for a person’s full development, the DDF said.

And Pope Leo XIV, continuing the Vatican’s engagement with AI, has frequently addressed the topic during his nascent pontificate, stressing that AI should be “a tool for the good of human beings, not to diminish them, [and] not to replace them.”

The rise of ever more “humanlike” AI has brought real dangers: Secular AI platforms, such as Character.AI, already host tens of millions of users who spend hours daily conversing with chatbots. In 2024, a Florida teenager took his life after a harmful interaction with an AI “girlfriend.”

“We miss out on precious opportunities to encounter God’s love through an empathic human encounter when we have false expectations for our AI tools,” commented Legionary Father Michael Baggot, a bioethics professor at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome.

While some recognition of humanlike qualities in machines is natural, it is vital to remember that, unlike machines, humans not only have free will but also a unique capacity for insight into meaning and abstract thought, Father Baggot said, speaking earlier this year with Catholic News Agency, the Register’s sister news partner.

“They may sometimes appear human and mimic human emotions, but lack an inner conscious life. AI systems can provide helpful information about sins and virtues, but it does not know what it is like to struggle through temptation and find liberation through grace,” Father Baggot noted.

Several additional experts in Catholic philosophy contacted by the Register expressed reserved optimism about some aspects of “Catholic AI,” but all of them strongly urged caution on the use of AI to impersonate the saints, warning that Catholics must take care not to use these systems as a replacement for genuine human or prayerful interaction.

Steven Umbrello, managing director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and a research fellow at the University of Turin who has written extensively on the ethics of AI, told the Register that he views Saint Chat as a potentially valuable innovation, but only as a study aid that points users to the saints’ authentic words.

Umbrello said he could imagine some potentially valuable use cases — students could seek out direct quotations from saints with references, and the system could summarize contested questions with nods to schools of interpretation.

Such a system could quickly become morally problematic, however, if it “impersonates a saint’s living voice, invents counsel, or is used for discernment, direction or quasi‑devotional ‘chatting’ that displaces prayer and the sacramental life.”

“Keep persons, with their capacity to understand, judge, decide and love, at the center, and keep machines in their place as instruments ordered to the truth and the common good,” Umbrello said.

“A saint can intercede; a server cannot.”

Chad Engelland, a professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas, told the Register that an AI fed on solid Catholic content — like Magisterium — would “certainly be better” than an AI fed on general internet sources. But, echoing Umbrello, Engelland said such an interface should be “self-effacing, leading us beyond ourselves to living leaders and the saintly departed.”

“It is a good and holy desire to draw near to the saints. We do that through devotion to their feast days, their relics, their writings, and above all through prayer,” he noted.

Commenting on the differences between human-written and AI-generated saintly dialogues, Engelland noted that philosophical dialogue is designed to draw readers in and “transform them for the better despite themselves.” To do that effectively, one must know the human heart “from the inside,” he said.

“AI is a machine that echoes speech. You can use AI to regurgitate textbook knowledge, but you cannot use it as a source of wisdom. If you want advice, seek out a prayerful, discerning person. Turn to your priest or a thoughtful friend. Don’t seek wisdom from a bot, even one dressed up in saintly attire,” he advised.

“If you want to encounter Venerable Fulton Sheen, watch his TV shows, read his books, visit his tomb — and above all, pray to him. We don’t need an AI Sheen avatar. It would be entertaining but not edifying. We can do better. We are Catholics. Our faith offers real communion with the saints.”

This article was originally published on National Catholic Register.