The robot Mindar can recite a pre-programmed sermon but does not have artificial intelligence yet.
Catholic theologian and nun, Sister Ilia Delio, told the Vox website she might be open to having robotic priests because of the sexual abuse crisis in the Church.
She said: “Take the Catholic Church. It’s very male, very patriarchal, and we have this whole sexual abuse crisis. So would I want a robot priest? Maybe!
“A robot can be gender-neutral. It might be able to transcend some of those divides and be able to enhance community in a way that’s more liberating.”
She joked though that robot priests would be better suited to the Protestant church as “the Catholic notion would say the priest is ontologically changed upon ordination”.
“We have these fixed philosophical ideas and AI challenges those ideas – it challenges Catholicism to move toward a post-human priesthood.”
Premier’s head of digital theology, Rev Dr Pete Philips, who has a PhD in John’s Gospel and lectures about the Bible in the digital age, explained that Christians have to ask themselves whether the priest’s role is replaceable or not, comparing it to the replacing of staff at tills in supermarkets.
He said: “The question is, do we want that to be what a priest does? It strikes me that the ministers in our churches don’t do that kind of thing. It almost takes us back to pre-reformation when Catholic…
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