Fr. Carles Gil i Saguer, Superior General of the Order of the Pious Schools, took part in the 104th General Assembly of the Union of Superiors General (USG), held in Rome from 26 to 28 November 2025. The meeting brought together around 160 Superiors General to reflect, from the perspective of consecrated life, on the theme “Connected Faith: Living Prayer in the Digital Age”.
The Assembly opened on Wednesday, 26 November, with an audience with the Holy Father Leo XIV in the New Synod Hall. In his address, the Pope structured his reflection around the centrality of relationship with God, the care of fraternity, and discernment in the face of the digital world. He underlined prayer as an indispensable relational space for consecrated life and warned of the risk of replacing real bonds with virtual connections, recalling in particular that the ordinary instruments of communion and governance — such as chapters, councils, canonical visitations and formative moments — cannot be reduced to “remote connections”.
On Thursday, 27 November, from the vantage point of different charisms, the Assembly highlighted the need to safeguard the interior life and to support a real fraternal presence, capable of inhabiting the digital culture without losing the human and evangelical depth of encounter.
On Friday, 28 November, the Assembly addressed directly the impact of artificial intelligence and social networks on spiritual experience. Among the contributions made public, the intervention of Fr. Carlo Casalone, S.J., stood out. He presented the technological question as also an anthropological and spiritual question, pointing out risks such as the erosion of trust and the loss of attention and memory, and proposed prayer and discernment as concrete paths to “remain human” in an environment increasingly conditioned by the digital.
The presence of Fr. Carles at the Assembly falls within the dynamic of ecclesial communion proper to the service of governance in religious life and is directly linked to the educational and pastoral challenges of the Pious Schools in a world marked by digital culture.
