Theme: Preserving Human Voices and Faces

By Most Rev. Felix Femi Ajakaye, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Ekiti.

 

No one in this world is pure and perfect.

If you avoid people for their mistakes, you will be alone

in this world, so judge less and love more.

 - Apj Abdul Kamal (1931-2015), Aero Space Scientist and former President of India

 

My Brothers, Sisters and Friends, blessed, joyful and spirit-filled Seventh Sunday of Easter and happy new week to you all. May we continue to experience God’s special favours in our daily journeys and struggles of life. Amen.

Today, very specially, I greet and congratulate all journalists, communicators, artistes, actors, actresses, entertainers and everyone in the Creative Industry as we celebrate the 60th World Social Communications Day. Yes, it is the Diamond Jubilee. To God be all the glory for everything.

 

In our Liturgy today, the Scripture Readings emphasize our constant patience in praying in whatever situation that we find ourselves. That is, in life, we need to keep hope active and alive. Notably, prayer is our discussion between us, human beings, and God, our loving Father and Creator.

 

In our gathering at this Year’s 60th World Social Communications Day, His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV, wishes us to reflect deeply on the promotion of the human voice and face in relation to the use of the digital technology. This is why the Theme of his Message is: ‘Preserving Human Voices and Faces’.

The Pope states: ‘Dear brothers and sisters, our faces and voices are unique, distinctive features of every person; they reveal a person’s own unrepeatable identity and are the defining elements of every encounter with others. The ancients understood this well. To define the human person, the ancient Greeks used the word “face’ (prosopon), because it expresses etymologically what is before one’s gaze, the place of presence and relationship. The Latin term, “person” (from per-sonare), on the other hand, evokes the idea of sound: not just any sound, but the unmistakable sound of someone’s voice’.

Furthermore, Pope Leo XIV posits: ‘Faces and voices are sacred. God who created us in his image and likeness, gave them to us when he called us to life through the word he addressed to us. This word resounded down the centuries through the voices of the prophets, and then became flesh in the fullness of time. We too have heard and seen this word (cf. 1Jn 1:1-3) – in which God communicates his very self to us – because it has been made known to us in the voice and face of Jesus, the Son of God’.

‘From the moment of creation, God wanted man and woman to be his interlocutors (interlocutor: someone who you are having conversation with; someone who takes part in talks as a representative of another person or organization), and as Saint Gregory of Nyssa [1] explained, he imprinted on our faces a reflection of divine love, so that we may fully live our humanity through love. Preserving human faces and voices, therefore, means preserving this mark, this indelible reflection of God’s love. We are not a species composed of predefined biochemical formulas. Each of us possesses an irreplaceable and inimitable vocation, that originates from our own lived experience and becomes manifest through interaction with others.’ The Pope remarks.

Then, His Holiness reminds us: ‘If we fail in this task of preservation, digital technology threatens to alter radically some of the fundamental pillars of human civilization that at times are taken for granted. By stimulating human voices and faces, wisdom and knowledge, consciousness and responsibility, empathy and friendship, the systems known as artificial intelligence not only interfere with information ecosystems, but also encroach upon the deepest level of communication, that of human relationships’.

Pope Leo XIV would like all of us to know that: ‘The challenge therefore, is not technological, but anthropological. Safeguarding faces and voices ultimately means safeguarding ourselves. Embracing the opportunities offered by digital technology and artificial intelligence with courage, determination and discernment does not mean turning a blind eye to critical issues, complexities and risks’.

 The Message of Pope Leo XIV is in line with the 2024 Message of Pope Francis of the Blessed Memory, with the Theme: ‘Artificial intelligence and wisdom of the heart: for a fully human communication’.

In its announcement of Pope Francis’ Message then, the Holy See Press Office observed: ‘The evolution of artificial intelligence systems makes it ever more natural to communicate through and with machines, so that it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish computation from thought, and the language produced by a machine from that generated by human beings’.

The statement continued: Like all revolutions, this one, based on artificial intelligence, too, poses new challenges to ensure that machines do not contribute to a large-scale system of disinformation and do not also increase the loneliness of those who are already alone, depriving us of the warmth that only communication between people can provide. It is important to guide artificial intelligence and algorithms, so that there is in each individual a responsible awareness of the use and development of these different forms of communication that go hand in hand with social media and the Internet. It is necessary for communication to be oriented towards a fuller life of the human person’.

 John McCarthy (1927-2011), an American Computer Scientist, is universally recognised as the ‘Father of Artificial Intelligence’, AI. The major or primary aim of the people behind AI is to ‘implement human intelligence in machines so that machines can act like humans. They want to make such machines that understand, think, behave, solve a problem, and many more’.

‘No one in this world is pure and perfect. If you avoid people for their mistakes, you will be alone in this world, so judge less and love more.’ (Apj Abdul Kamal, Aero Space Scientist and former President of India) My Brothers, Sisters and Friends, this quotation is a reminder to all of us that ALL human beings are LIMITED. Only God is LIMITLESS. John McCarthy’s depicts the fact that human beings, no matter the greatness, have limitations. It is God who determines EVERYTHING. He is the Alpha and the Omega.

‘Limited means restricted, confined, or small in amount, range or degree. It indicates that something is kept within specific boundaries or not available in an infinite supply.’ However, limitless is explained to be: ‘something without boundaries, restrictions, or ends’. ‘It describes a seemingly infinite or boundless amount, number, or extent. It implies that something is so vast or inexhaustible that it will never run out’.

Thus, bearing this in mind, since AI is man-made, and man is limited, AI can only act like human being, it can NEVER be human being. The message here is to be cautious in the use of digital technology. Its merits, advantages, are to be positively promoted, while their demerits, disadvantages, negativity, must be thoroughly, strongly discarded to maintain the loving, lovely and sane world where people, united in Faith, Hope and Love, share together as God’s own family their ups and downs. 

There is the need for the world where human voices will be heard and faces will be seen constantly instead of upholding digital technology and artificial intelligence that promote division and destruction of relationships.

 Always remember that the beauty of life does not depend solely on how happy you are, but how happy other people can be through you. Isolation tends to lead to depression and mental health. Let us learn to love one another, care and support one another. Let us try to ‘Live every moment, Laugh everyday, Love beyond words’.

 

Communication without proper understanding is meaningless. It is not REAL. It is ARTIFICIAL. Hence, I enjoin human beings not to be addicted to mobile phones and social media. We are the owners of our mobile phones and we must never allow them to direct, lead us. As God’s own children with unique, identified voices and faces, we are relational people and we are to be relating and sharing positively, concretely and meaningfully with one another.

 

‘Share with gentleness the hope that is in your hearts (cf. 1 Peter 3:15-16)’ – Theme of the 59th Word Social Communications Day.

 

God bless His Church always. God bless Pope Leo XIV always. God bless our Catholic Diocese of Ekiti always. God bless all our Media Practitioners always. God bless our Ekiti State and our Nigeria always.

With confidence in God, and Christ being our strength, wherever God leads us, we FOLLOW with joy, commitment and happiness.

 

Most Rev. Felix Femi Ajakaye

Bishop of Ekiti.

17 May, 2026.