The Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain has con­demned an AI-gen­er­at­ed im­age of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump dressed as the pope, call­ing it “par­tic­u­lar­ly in­sen­si­tive” giv­en the on­go­ing mourn­ing pe­ri­od for Pope Fran­cis.

“We are aware of the AI-gen­er­at­ed im­age por­tray­ing US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump as the Pope that is cur­rent­ly cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia,” the Arch­dio­cese said in a state­ment is­sued Sun­day.

The im­age, cre­at­ed with ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, was orig­i­nal­ly shared by Trump on his Truth So­cial plat­form on Fri­day night and lat­er re­post­ed by the White House on its of­fi­cial X ac­count. It comes as the Vat­i­can ob­serves nine days of of­fi­cial mourn­ing fol­low­ing Pope Fran­cis’s death on April 21. A con­clave to elect his suc­ces­sor is ex­pect­ed to be­gin with­in days.

The Arch­dio­cese said while dig­i­tal cre­ativ­i­ty is now part of mod­ern me­dia, re­li­gious im­agery—es­pe­cial­ly that of the Pa­pal Of­fice—car­ries deep sig­nif­i­cance for Ro­man Catholics.

“In the wake of the pass­ing of Pope Fran­cis, this im­age is par­tic­u­lar­ly in­sen­si­tive,” the state­ment said. “Dis­re­spect dis­guised as hu­mour too of­ten tar­gets the sa­cred, re­flect­ing a trou­bling dis­re­gard for faith and tra­di­tion.”

The Arch­dio­cese urged users and cre­ators of AI to act eth­i­cal­ly when deal­ing with re­li­gion, say­ing, “Even in a dig­i­tal age, truth and rev­er­ence still mat­ter.”