(ANS – Vatican City) – A delegation from the Salesian University Institute of Venice (IUSVE), aggregated to the Pontifical Salesian University, and comprising the Director General, Fr Nicola Giacopini, SDB, the Director of Institutional Communication, Marco Sanavio, the Head of the Communication Area, Michela Drusian, and students Matteo Barbassi, Alessia Fattorel, Naike Pittana and Alice Tessari, met Pope Leo XIV on the sidelines of the general audience on Wednesday 26 November.
The Holy Father was able to listen to the ‘Voice of the World’, created through ‘Harmonia’ (harmoniaexpo.org), a web application designed by IUSVE and presented at the Holy See Pavilion during Expo 2025 in Osaka from 22 to 28 September 2025. The application was simultaneously made accessible online on a global scale. Users contributed by recording a phrase to invoke peace, spoken by the pontiff on the day of his election, in multiple languages. Once the collection was complete, an advanced artificial intelligence application analysed and processed each contribution, merging all the voices into a single audio track: the ‘Voice of the World’, a shared call for peace.
The algorithmic analysis suggested translating into Latin the phrase chosen to represent the ‘Voice of the World’: “Auxilium et vos praebete nobis; ac dein ad pontes aedificandos invicem suscitate vos per dialogum et occursum, ut omnes coniuncti unus populus semper in pace fiamus”(Help us also to build bridges with one another, through dialogue and encounter, uniting us all to be one people always in peace).
The collective voice generated by the processing of Artificial Intelligence (AI) from tens of thousands of collected recordings is feminine, with a low to medium-grave tone (medium pitch 177 Hz), a restrained intensity and various linguistic inflections. It conveys calm emotion and offers harmonious and easily recognisable articulatory clarity.
Further technical features are available in the report published on the harmoniaexpo.org application website.
The IUSVE delegation also presented Pope Leo with an illustrated album inspired by the apostolic exhortation ‘Dilexi Te’, created with supervised IA.
‘The academic mission,’ IUSVE Director Fr Giacopini pointed out, ‘was made possible thanks to the support of Archbishop Rino Fisichella, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelisation, and of Dr Lucia Capobianco, Dr Davide Emanuele Nappi and Official Stefano Riccardi, Director of the Pavilion in Osaka. It was an extraordinary opportunity for the students to put their skills into practice in an international context, applying AI in an ethical, supervised and responsible manner.’
Source: ANS – “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana”