Project 1 Pastoral care and spiritual care in the digital space

The project “From Human to Machine to Human? – Pastoral Care and Spiritual Care in the Digital Space” aims, overall, to foster a better understanding of digital communication within various pastoral care contexts. 

On the one hand, it examines human-to-human communication in the digital space. In doing so, it explores the potential and limitations of digital pastoral communication and examines the skills required of pastoral carers. To this end, empirical studies are being conducted following pastoral training programmes, amongst other initiatives. Networking is crucial in this field, and so regular think tanks, workshops and specialist conferences with practitioners from the field are integral to the project.

On the other hand, artificial intelligence is analysed in the context of pastoral care and spiritual care. The study examines the extent to which AI can be used as a helpful tool in pastoral training and how pastoral carers assess developments in AI in relation to their pastoral work. To this end, AI (including in conjunction with Virtual Reality, VR) is being explored and scientifically evaluated in pastoral training. An interdisciplinary workshop entitled ‘Compassionate AI?’ also addresses the question of whether AI can act with compassion and what implications this has for human interactions.