Does AI Know Who the Pope Is?

We are undoubtedly in the feeding frenzy phase of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption. As of today, Sam Altman, the OpenAI chief has declared AI may be more intelligent than humans, noting "We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started."

My response to Mr. Altman, to quote a line from Billy Madison (1995), "What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard." How could I (jokingly) say such a thing? AI is everywhere. Maybe even your toaster? There is a well understood pattern to technology adoption. When you were a kid you may have had a little red wagon called a "Radio Flyer." What did a wagon have to do with radio? Nothing. But the toy wagon was made during the early age of flight and radio and it was a popular thing to link it to these new technologies as a marketing ploy. In other words, if you think AI is everywhere now just wait until this Christmas gift buying season. Take Altman's declarations of crossing an "event horizon" cautiously as he continues to seek more investors.

Our executive director has told me people will ask him from time to time how CARA is using AI. I told him to let them know we are hesitant to do so because AI isn't Catholic. That's more than a joke. We specialize in doing research about and for the Church and in this way must speak intelligently about theology and Church history in the language specific to Catholicism. 

But AI knows everything right? Well does it actually "know" anything? Or is it just very fast at processing extremely large databases of information and past experience? I'll be honest no one really knows how AI works. But we can get a sense from interacting with it.

I asked ChatGPT to describe the recent conclave to me in the following way:

It's not that ChatGPT won't tell you who the current pope is if directly asked, "Who is the current pope?" You can see the response below: 

With one query Pope Leo XIV has never existed and in the next he does. Notice in the second ChatGPT is relying on searching the internet and returning information from the Vatican, Crux, ... and Wikipedia! Welcome to the "event horizon" of the age of internet regurgitation packaged in a narrative that sounds fairly human. Is that AI? Is it even intelligent? Is it any better than Google circa 2000? I know my answer, for now.

ChatGPT does have a recent events "blindspot." When its most recent training does not include current or even recent events it must use search just like the rest of us to look for information it doesn't have. But it can usually recover quickly. 

For example, on July 12, 2024 a video about "The Weirdest Hoax on the Internet" was released. This told the story of a student at the University of Surrey named Alan MacMasters who was cautioned by a professor about the quality of research sources. This inspired Alan and his friends, in 2013, to create a fake Wikipedia page claiming that a fictional man named Alan MacMasters invented the electric toaster in 1893. For many years this fake page made it into newspapers, local holidays honoring MacMasters, and even bread commercials. It became "real" history. When I asked ChatGPT who invented the electric toaster on July 12, 2024, the date of the video about the hoax was released, ChatGPT responded, Alan MacMasters. A day later, on July 13, 2024, it correctly returned the history of the development of the electric toaster without the fictional information.  

Yet, we are now more than a month past the conclave and ChatGPT cannot correctly explain the selection of Pope Leo XIV and instead claims he may be a fictional character. This is the technology corporations are relying on and human beings are losing their jobs to? Seriously?

I asked ChatGPT in June 2025 to "Please generate a painting of the current pope." It responded:

Here is the image that was created of the "current" pope:
 

How does CARA curently use AI? For now, you just read it. It's not ready or useful to us as a reliable and factual research resource (we're not alone). It may be in the future. I am confident of it. For now, its hype is bigger than its utility. Perhaps when we get to a point where we have future iterations of AI models running on quantum computers we will have something truly special as Altman is currently trying to sell (...or not).

We'll surely at least wait for ChatGPT to catch up with the rest of humanity and become fully aware of Pope Leo XIV's existence (...and maybe until it can beat an Atari 2600 at chess).  

Watching Mass Online Remains Elevated Even With Mass Attendance Back to 2019 Levels

Five years ago, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and lockdowns began, many U.S. Catholics turned online to continue some semblance of worship on Sundays. Google search volumes for “Catholic Mass” increased 458% from what they were in February 2020. Prior to the pandemic, the search volumes for Catholic Mass on YouTube were comparatively low all the way back to January 2008, when measurements became possible.

Search volumes vary from 0 to 100. From January 2008 to February 2020, the average monthly search volume for Catholic Mass on YouTube was 6. This rose to an average of 78 from March 2020 through April 2022. After this time through today, the search volume for Catholic Mass has been 39. This tends to rise some during months including Ash Wednesday, Easter, and Christmas.

It appears the pandemic has created a new habit. Although in-person Mass attendance has returned to pre-pandemic levels, there is still a higher demand for watching Catholic Mass online than before the pandemic. This is not as high as it was during the peak interest period from March 2020 to April 2022, but is still elevated enough to represent a significant new behavior adopted by Catholics that did not exist as broadly in the past.

Mass Attendance Is Up

The Diocese of Arlington recently released a series of it’s October Mass attendance headcounts and these show the decline of attendance during the pandemic and then the slow but steady increase back to pre-pandemic levels.

This news came just as we at CARA had estimated the year-end Mass attendance nationally in the United States. We have utilized a method using our national surveys and Google Trends search volumes for Mass attendance related terms to estimate weekly attendance. As shown below (click image to enlarge), prior to the pandemic in 2019, weekly Mass attendance averaged 24.4%. From the beginning of the pandemic lock-downs in March 2020 to the declared end of the pandemic in May 2023, Mass attendance averaged 15.0%. Since this time, through the first week of 2025, it has averaged 24.0%.

 

 

Christmas in 2024 was the first time Mass attendance for this holiday reached its 2019 level. Easter and Ash Wednesday Mass attendance had returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2023. We have hypothesized that the heightened awareness and warnings about COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases during January were keeping some from returning to Mass at that time of year. We will keep tracking Mass attendance through 2025 and let you know how Ash Wednesday and Easter measure up.