Pope Leo XIV revealed his morning ritual to a room full of teenagers at the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis: he plays Wordle every single day, but never the same way twice.
Instead of relying on a fixed starting word—the strategy most players swear by—the pope picks a different opening word each morning. His brother John confirmed they're both devoted to the New York Times puzzle, though Leo's approach is distinctly his own.
It's a small detail, but it matters because of what came next. After sharing his Wordle habit, the pope didn't celebrate technology as the answer to anything. Instead, he turned to the young people in the room and asked them to think harder about why they're using their devices in the first place.
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Start Your News Detox"Be intentional with your screen time," he told them. "Make sure technology serves your life and not the other way around."
To illustrate his point, he pointed to Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager beatified in 2020 who was known for combining deep faith with genuine technological skill—not as a contradiction, but as something coherent. The message was clear: you can engage with modern tools without letting them run your life.
There's something quietly subversive about a pope who plays word games every morning while simultaneously telling young Catholics to be suspicious of screen time. He's not preaching abstinence. He's modeling something harder: intentionality. The difference between a tool you chose and a habit that chose you.
For a generation growing up in the thick of the digital age, that distinction might matter more than any sermon about putting phones away.
