Matthew McConaughey and his wife, Camila Alves, shared a brief meeting with Pope Leo XIV, something McConaughey is describing as an “honor.” McConaughey had the encounter while in Italy filming his upcoming Netflix movie Positano, with Matthew preparing a speech for the Pontiff, something he compared to prepping for an Oscar award. “That’s kind of like preparing a speech for winning an award that you don’t know you’re going to win yet. It’s a bit of a coup de grâce: Don’t do it because it’s not going to go as you expected. … So I had some ideas,” McConaughey told USA Today. He hoped to discuss the future of religion after so much decline in the past and the growing popularity of Catholicism amongst young people.  “They’ve tried other things that they’re seeing are vapid and don’t really work because they’re looking for more,” the 56-year-old actor suggested.

McConaughey also wanted to discuss his concerns and hopes for the rise of AI and how people are looking to it as a “digital God.” “Whether we like what it looks like or not, it is going to represent a true image of mankind by the questions we ask of it and the results we want of it. We may not like what we see when we look in the mirror, but we could also love what we see. It could be a greater truth,” he said, saying he was “excited” by the possibilities of AI. The couple were able to briefly meet the Pope during the Wednesday general audience in Vatican City on August 5.

The meeting sparked curiosity from USA Today whether McConaughey has been reinspired to invest in his political ambitions, with some wondering if he might someday run for governor of Texas. His response turned back to faith. “Look, I’m going to use this word ‘religion,’ even though some people are going to tune out when they hear that word. Life is essentially a religious experience. There’s a lot of things we can learn about living life – how to treat others and how to treat ourselves – through religious texts and teachings,” he said. Despite being a proponent of separation of church and state, McConaughey said he felt religious values should bleed into political system. He even went so far to say that there could be a new constitution that multiple religions could get behind. “There’s still a constitution out there to be written that all religions could agree on,” he said. “There’s so much commonality. It’s a constitution that I’m excited about seeing – I don’t know, maybe even adding to or working on. That would be a great thing to share.”