Artificial Intelligence in Spiritual Care: Modified Delphi Study
Fabian Winiger, C Estelle Smith, Shadi Nourriz, Csaba Szilagyi, Annette Haußmann, Alicia Stone, Ga In Han, Marco Dehnert, Mohamed Abdalla · 2026
Read Artificial Intelligence in Spiritual Care: Modified Delphi Study by Fabian Winiger, C Estelle Smith, Shadi Nourriz, Csaba Szilagyi, Annette Haußmann, Alicia Stone, Ga In Han, Marco Dehnert, Mohamed Abdalla (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13458354.txt.
Description
Fabian Winiger and colleagues run the first expert census on AI in spiritual care, the chaplaincy work of sitting with people through illness, grief, and meaning-making. A two-round modified Delphi study recruited 149 international experts across professions and worldviews, who rated 213 items on tasks, risks, benefits, ethics, limits, and needed skills.
Consensus was strong that AI can now assist with admin work at 95.1 percent agreement, information tasks at 93.7 percent, note-keeping at 83.8 percent, and research at 84.4 percent. Human-facing work fared far worse: creating supportive spaces, direct engagement, and ritual tasks each drew agreement near 42 to 44 percent, and panelists preferred AI assisting humans over replacing them throughout. Better screening and triage topped the benefit list; loss of human connection topped the risks. Judging where AI fits, guarding privacy, and cutting risk were the most endorsed skills. Only 45.8 percent judged benefits to outweigh risks overall.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Fabian Winiger, C Estelle Smith, Shadi Nourriz, Csaba Szilagyi, Annette Haußmann, Alicia Stone, Ga In Han, Marco Dehnert, Mohamed Abdalla |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 57 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |