The Pope Wants You to Write That Fanfiction You’ve Been Thinking About

Got a fanfiction idea you’ve been hiding in the dark corners of your subconscious? Holding back that Substack essay about your inner child? Got an idea for a zine? It’s time to put that shit to paper, by decree of Pope Leo XIV.

As part of his encyclical teaching on the dangers of AI to humanity and in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Vatican Publishing House, his holiness has a message for writers around the world: pick up that pen and write already, and don’t use AI to cheat it. On Tuesday, the official Pope Twitter account tweeted, “Dear writers, we need your imagination, your narrative creativity, and your lively thinking. We need these to create spaces of freedom and authenticity, within which divine grace can make the promise of consolation and peace resound.”

But given that the audience for this message was X dot com, the recipients of his divine words were many members of the Twitter fanfiction community, who took his instructions as an ordinance to double down on the smut.

The pope wants you 🫵🏻 to write smutty fanfic from the heart https://t.co/F9Ycql449q

— gas station boner pill 🔞 (@sapphyrnidae95) June 24, 2026

If you’re not into that, that’s okay. How about the next great American novel? Or an impassioned Yelp review of your local PF Changs? Smut or not, give that first draft a go. The pope would love to read it.

His holiness’s preference for human-made works reflects the hard stance he made against AI in May. After his first year in the papal office, Leo published his long-awaited encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), in which he addresses the church on the moral implications of AI, citing the story of the Tower of Babel and warning of “Babel Syndrome,” which he describes as “idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak.” In the 42,300-word document, Pope Leo urges more oversight in how we advance AI: “Calling for prudence, rigorous evaluation and even, at times, a slower pace in adopting AI does not mean opposing progress,” he writes, “Instead, it is an exercise of responsible care.”

On Thursday, the pope’s Twitter account shared more excerpts from Magnifica Humanitas, reiterating that, “We cannot consider #AI to be morally neutral. In reality, every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores, and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations.” Agree. AI is not morally neutral, and its art sucks. I don’t care if it can put your face on The Girl with the Pearl Earring or make an entire folk rock album in a matter of seconds. It still looks and sounds like shit, and it doesn’t compare to the fascinating debauchery that our mortal human minds can conjure. 

So go write that fanfic about Ben Affleck and Matt Damon sans ChatGPT and shout that AI-free poetry from the rooftops, if you truly wish to make the promise of consolation and peace resound.