“Do you believe in miracles?! YES!” This line does not appear in Pope Leo XIV’s 82-page encyclical about artificial intelligence. Instead, this is a line spoken by the sportscaster Al Michaels at the end of the 1980 Winter Olympics hockey game when the U.S. defeated the Soviets in one of the biggest sports upsets in history. Al Michaels played himself in the 2004 Disney movie Miracle that told the incredible story of a coach and his team that pulled off the victory known as the “Miracle on Ice.” The One Thoughtful Paragraph below looks at how one of the Pope’s own flock is trying to pull off an artificial intelligence miracle in Congress.
Other news this week that isn’t miraculous, but it is interesting:
- HHS Secretary Kennedy urged patients to report instances of information blocking through the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC) portal in a recent social media post.
- As part of its broader fraud enforcement focus, HHS launched the Audit Enforcement and Risk Oversight Initiative (AERO). The new program integrity initiative uses AI analytical tools to detect audit noncompliance, reviewing at least five years of audit records of HHS-funded programs across all 50 states. Hospitals receiving Medicaid, NIH, HRSA or pandemic-relief funding are the primary targets.
- The FDA extended the comment period for stakeholders to respond to its proposal to pilot an AI-enabled clinical trial by 30-days. Comments are now due June 29, 2026.
“This cannot be a team of common men because common men go nowhere. You have to be uncommon.” This is a line from the film Miracle, spoken by Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks – the real-life U.S. Men’s Hockey team head coach who led a bunch of amateur players, from the rival college teams like the Boston Terriers and Minnesota Gophers, to win the gold medal in 1980 Olympic games. Interestingly, it is a similar point the Pope makes in Chapter 3 of his encyclical about AI subtitled: “The Grandeur of Humanity in Light of the Promises of AI.” In paragraph 125, the Pope calls out doctors and nurses as uncommon examples (“martyrs of everyday life”) of humans who care for others without fanfare. Another Catholic worth mentioning this week is Congresswoman Lori Trahan, a Democrat from Massachusetts, who is reportedly working with (gasp!) a Republican to draft a federal regulatory scheme for artificial intelligence. This act of bipartisanship is uncommon (though another Massachusetts Democrat was known for that uncommon approach — without Senator Ted Kennedy’s work with conservative Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, we wouldn’t have the very necessary Children’s Health Insurance Program). It will take a bipartisan team of uncommonly courageous leaders to create a federal framework for a technology that does not recognize state borders. With individual states creating their own AI governance rules, this attempt to create a bipartisan miracle cannot come soon enough. The urgent need for AI governance seems to be the Pope’s point too. Congresswoman Trahan seems to be collecting the ire of Democratic leaders in Congress who are currently focused on winning midterm elections and not cooperating with rival Republicans. But she seems to be like the player from Massachusetts in the Miracle movie when the coach screams at him: “Who do you play for?” and he shouts back “I play for the United States of America!”
