The head of a global children's ministry is urging Christian leaders worldwide to take an active role in shaping how artificial intelligence influences the formation of young people, responding to a major Vatican document on the topic.
Rob Hoskins, president of OneHope — a ministry that says it has reached more than 2 billion children with the Gospel since 1987 — released a statement this week welcoming Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, which addresses the theological and ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence. Hoskins said the document names what he described as a crisis that is "not technological, but anthropological and spiritual."
"The deepest questions emerging from the AI age are not ultimately technical questions, but theological questions," Hoskins wrote. "They are questions of dignity, purpose, truth, formation, and the story we believe our lives are part of."
Hoskins said he was invited by AI company Anthropic to attend a meeting with researchers, ethicists and technology developers, where he said he was struck less by the sophistication of the technology than by its moral implications.
In his statement, Hoskins argued that artificial intelligence will inevitably reflect the values of those who build and deploy it, and that the church has a responsibility to contribute to that conversation. He described the encyclical's warning against technology that seeks to transcend or redefine human identity as something he affirms.
"Human beings are not problems to be optimized away," he wrote. "We are image bearers of God, created for relationship with Him and with one another through Jesus Christ."
A formation crisis already underway
The core of Hoskins' concern is that AI systems are already shaping children — with or without the church's involvement. He warned that the values being embedded in those systems today will determine how billions of young people learn, think and understand their own humanity for generations to come.
Hoskins called on church leaders not to wait until they feel fully equipped to respond. Formation, he wrote, "is happening right now" in the absence of pastoral and parental voices, and it will not pause for the church's readiness.
He argued that what children need is not primarily guidance on screen time limits, but a theological framework — a "robust, Scripture-rooted understanding" of their identity as image-bearers of God, their purpose as people called to love and serve, and the resilience to hold onto truth when competing voices multiply.
To pastors and ministry leaders
Hoskins called on pastors and youth ministers to treat the question of AI and human identity as a discipleship issue, not a technology issue. He urged them to address it from pulpits, incorporate it into classroom teaching and weave it into existing discipleship structures.
His concern is that children are being formed by AI systems in ways that go beyond screen exposure — systems that, he argued, carry embedded assumptions about identity, truth and what it means to be human. Without a corresponding theological grounding, he wrote, young people lack the tools to evaluate those assumptions critically.
Hoskins framed digital discernment as inseparable from deeper theological formation. Teaching children to navigate AI, in his view, is not a supplementary topic but "a foundational part of discipleship" in the current era — one that requires helping young people understand concepts such as embodiment, community and human dignity through a scriptural lens.
To parents
Hoskins emphasized that parents are more influential in a child's formation than any platform, model or algorithm. No technology company, he wrote, however sophisticated, can replicate what God has entrusted to a parent.
He urged parents to be present and to ask substantive questions about what their children are encountering — not only in social media but in AI tools and digital environments that are actively shaping how children see themselves. He called for space within family life for conversations about faith, identity, truth and human flourishing that only a parent can initiate.
"The greatest gift you can give your child in the age of AI is a parent who is fully, unhurriedly, irreplaceably there," he wrote.
To technology developers
Hoskins also directed specific recommendations to the technology industry. He called on developers to design AI systems for human flourishing rather than dependency, to be transparent about the values embedded in their products, and to actively invite faith communities into dialogue — not as a courtesy, but as a substantive contribution to how AI is built.
He acknowledged that many in the technology sector already recognize the ethical weight of what they are building, and said he had been encouraged by technology leaders who have expressed genuine openness to engaging faith perspectives. But he said the standard must be grounded in human dignity rather than metrics or market share, and that children in particular must be protected by design.
Church's role
Finally, Hoskins argued that the global Church is uniquely positioned to contribute to the AI conversation, carrying two thousand years of accumulated wisdom on questions of virtue, formation, community and the meaning of human life — questions he said are now at the center of public debate about artificial intelligence.
The current moment is an opportunity for the Church to serve, he said, adding that he is personally committed to helping bridge the conversation between faith communities and the technology sector.
