MEMORY
Pope St. John Paul II once said:
The man without a memory is a man without a future.
Pope Leo XIV celebrated a Mass for the inauguration of the academic year of pontifical universities (8 October 2026). There are seven pontifical universities in Rome.
This is what the pope said:
Intelligence must draw on memory.
The mind must not simply compile data — as an algorithm now does more quickly than we can — but recall lived experiences, which contain depths of meaning that only the human soul can recognise, and connect more deeply with.
That’s it. We are spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5), not machines with artificial intelligence.
Because of this experts say we have seven memories:
We have narrative memory and emotional memory. That is, we can recall events and our emotional reactions.
We have touch, smell, sight, taste and hearing memory.
The pope makes the point that memory is at the service primarily of the heart:
Routine, ambitions, rivalries and other negative factors can, over time, divert our attention and energy, leaving us exhausted and listless, quarrelsome and sad. We must therefore return to the heart. That is where it all began.
Such great advice.
AMEN.
