Pope Leo XIV says management of artificial intelligence should not stay in the arms “of a few” whereas warning that know-how is fueling world conflicts, setting out his proposals in the first major theological document of his pontificate.
These embody defending the distinctive “grandeur of humanity” amid quickly altering know-how and for the use of AI in warfare to be topic to “the most rigorous ethical constraints.”
While the encyclical focuses on AI, it’s a textual content that goes past technological questions and touches on crises dealing with humanity. Pope Leo stated that the “just war” idea – a four-pronged Christian doctrine stating what circumstances justify conflict – is “now outdated,” saying that navy drive can solely be used for “self-defense in the strictest sense.”
He provides that the “litmus test” for social justice is the remedy of migrants and refugees and provided an apology for the church’s legitimizing in slavery and delay in denouncing the scourge.
The pope, who has made peace-making a central function of his hold forth, warns that the use of “force, violence and weapons” finally “has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.”
“The construction of a world in a state of perpetual conflict is an evil and must be named for what it is,” the pope writes, including that
“Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness.”
His opposition to Just War follows remarks by US President JD Vance that the pope “be careful when he talks about matters of theology” after the Catholic religious chief fiercley criticized joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran and rebuked world leaders for invoking spiritual language to rationalize conflict.
Parallels between AI and ‘Tower of Babel’
In the textual content, the pope additionally requires a sequence of ideas to be utilized to the event of AI, together with a fairer distribution of sources, the dignity of the human individual, social justice and look after the setting.
Drawing on a biblical story, the pope warns that with AI, humanity dangers constructing a “Tower of Babel,” which was an try for folks to “make a name” for themselves with a single energy and one language. The pope says the story is a warning towards a plan that “dominates and ultimately dehumanizes,” insisting as an alternative that numerous opinions and teams ought to contribute to AI’s improvement.
Leo insists that the know-how should shield peoples’ jobs and must be topic to “robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required.”
An encyclical is historically a letter despatched by the pope to the bishops and the broader Roman Catholic Church, however just lately it has broadened with Pope Francis utilizing the first encyclical of his papacy to handle the entire world on defending the setting.
Leo XIV’s document on AI, “Magnifica Humanitas” (“Magnificent Humanity”), is being seen as a equally landmark textual content for his papacy, and as addressing an epoch-defining matter which he addressed to Catholics and “every person of goodwill.”
Pope Leo has recognized AI as a prime precedence, and he’s the first pontiff to personally current an encyclical letter to the world on the Vatican.
Past popes have usually handed that position of presenting an encyclical to cardinals or different senior figures. Instead, the pope oversaw the discharge of the 235-page booklet alongside Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, an AI firm that has been in authorized dispute with the Trump administration over the use of its know-how in navy and protection operations.
Olah echoed Pope Leo’s name for larger accountability of AI tycoons on Monday, saying that choices “should not be left to people in the industry.” He listed three ideas that require a collective decision – together with a “duty to the global poor,” “moral imagination and ambition” and the “need for discernment.”
“Every frontier AI lab, including Anthropic, operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing,” Olah instructed an viewers on the Vatican.
“If we want this technology to go well, it is enormously important that there be people outside those incentives … who are willing to be our earnest, thoughtful critics,” he added. “That is what I see in Magnifica Humanitas.”
The pope’s textual content outlines an strategy to AI which neither rejects the alternatives provided by the know-how, nor sees it as opening a utopia-style future. His encyclical seeks to supply the sources of Catholic social instructing – the engagement with political and civic life – to the dialogue on AI. Leo’s prime concern is sustaining the centrality, and distinctive dignity, of the human individual.
To that finish, the first American pope points a critique of “transhumanism,” the concept that know-how might help an individual overcome bodily and organic limitations corresponding to getting older, and of “posthumanism,” which questions the distinctiveness of human beings and blurs the boundaries between people and machines.
“We cannot consider AI to be morally neutral,” the pope writes. “Every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations.”
The selection of Anthropic for the encyclical unveiling displays the continuing tensions between the Chicago-born pope and US President Donald Trump, who has launched a sequence of criticisms towards the pontiff for his stance on the Iran conflict. The Trump administration has taken a hands-off strategy to AI regulation, with the president deciding to postpone signing an executive order making certain authorities opinions of new AI fashions, together with Anthropic’s Mythos system.
Including Olah on the launch platform, nevertheless, reveals the Vatican is looking for to instantly affect these concerned with creating the know-how, and to not merely be speaking from the sidelines. And a Vatican supply stated that Anthropic’s inclusion is “not an endorsement, prize, reward or canonization.”
Pope Leo has already addressed the subject of AI a number of occasions throughout his year-long papacy, warning against “overly affectionate” chatbots, sending a message to tech execs meeting on AI in the Vatican and urging monks to not use AI when writing their homilies.
Just a few days earlier than the encyclical was launched, the pope took the bizarre resolution to determine a cross-department Vatican fee on AI, which is able to look at the consequences of the know-how.
The speedy advance of AI may additionally have been an element in Leo XIV’s selection of identify. Speaking to the College of Cardinals soon after his election, the pope identified that that his namesake, Leo XIII, was remembered because the pope of Catholic social instructing – the church’s engagement with public life – through the time of the commercial revolution.
Leo XIII wrote the landmark encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” in 1891, a wide-ranging textual content addressing staff’ rights, a good wage and the fitting to non-public property. Leo XIV instructed the cardinals that he hoped to supply the Church’s social instructing in response “to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence.” He signed his AI encyclical on May 15, 2026, on the identical day that Rerum Novarum was launched 135 years beforehand.
“The time to talk about AI is now. It is urgent,” Anna Rowlands, a theologian from the University of Durham who spoke together with the pope on the encyclical’s launch, instructed NCS.
“The encyclical helps all of us – believers and non-believers – to ask the same fundamental question: what does it mean to be human in an age when human life faces an unprecedented challenge from the development of various technologies … this text is a rallying cry, a Gospel cry, to build together a civilisation of love and oppose a culture of mere power.”
The pope’s encyclical builds on the work already finished by the Vatican on AI, together with a dialogue with Silicon valley over the past decade and a push for larger regulation. Pope Francis also addressed world leaders on the topic when he became the first pope to speak to the G7 in June 2024. The Vatican’s doctrine and training workplaces final 12 months issued a document highlighting AI-driven misinformation together with deepfakes, whereas a theological commission launched an in depth reflection trying on the threats posed by AI, transhumanism and posthumanism.
The Vatican has seen how AI can be utilized first hand. Pope Francis was the topic of a number of deepfake photographs, whereas Pope Leo revealed he refused to allow a “papal avatar” of him who would maintain non-public audiences and reply questions.
But Father Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official, says Leo’s encyclical is a brand new second and marks the “most significant institutional response” to AI by a major world spiritual physique, and maybe the clearest sign but that the Vatican intends to do greater than concern clever warnings from the margins of debate.”
Now, the main focus is on what occurs subsequent. Pope Francis timed his 2015 encyclical on the setting to affect the Paris COP21 local weather summit, with the textual content gaining traction each inside and out of doors the Cchurch as inspiration for sustainability initiatives.
Leo will probably hope that his personal textual content will not be merely learn and placed on a shelf however is a document that may encourage significant motion.