Pope Leo XIV also urged his fellow clergymen to ‘use your brains more’ …
The Chicago-born pontiff, who is the first head of the Catholic Church to hail from the United States, also urged his fellow clergymen to “use your brains more.”
The pope made the remarks during a closed-door meeting with the clergy of the Diocese of Rome on February 19. The details of the meeting, in which the pope took questions from priests, were unsealed the next day and reported by Vatican News.
“Like all the muscles in the body, if we do not use them, if we do not move them, they die,” he warned. “The brain needs to be used, so our intelligence must also be exercised a little so as not to lose this capacity.”
The 70-year-old also took aim at social media platforms and asked members of the clergy to be mindful about chasing “likes” and “followers” through an “illusion on the internet, on TikTok.”
Pope Leo XIV often weighs in on world politics, even choosing his papal name because of his views on artificial intelligenceand the name’s historical connotations.
“There were many reasons, but mainly Pope Leo XIII, who, in his historic encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution,” Leo said last year, according to Vatican News.
The pope has also weighed in on politics in his birth country. He has repeatedly criticized President Trump’s administration, leading some MAGA Republicans to brand him as “woke.”
At the time, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rejected the idea that immigrants were treated in an “inhumane” manner in the U.S. but did not directly reference comments made by Pope Leo.
However, even before becoming head of the Catholic Church, the future pope had been critical of the Trump administration’s stance on immigration.
In February 2025, he claimed that Vice President JD Vance was “wrong” to suggest that Christian teachings underpinned the government’s immigration policies.
Vance told Fox News that he believed people should “love your family and, then, to love your neighbour.”
He went on to claim that, only then, should the government “prioritize the rest of the world.”