Why Pope Leo XIV is speaking up about artificial intelligence and humanity

Monday morning, the Roman Catholic Church made its greatest foray but into the discourse on synthetic intelligence and the position it ought to play in human life because the expertise develops.

Within the first encyclical of his papacy, titled Magnifica humanitas (Latin for “magnificent humanity”), Pope Leo XIV argued that AI just isn’t intrinsically immoral, however that its adoption wanted to be slowed with a purpose to construct ethical guardrails, to ascertain higher social security nets for these displaced by financial and labor disruptions, and to create democratic processes that may guarantee the general public stays accountable for these developments, moderately than a small subset of tech oligarchs. The doc additionally contended that the “intelligence” in synthetic intelligence was a misnomer: Intelligence is one thing solely human individuals possess, and expertise won’t ever be human.

Encyclicals are official instructing paperwork of the Catholic Church: letters issued by popes to bishops after session with theologians, historians, and consultants on urgent issues that have an effect on humanity or the church, with the expectation that every one individuals, devoted or secular, can study from them and assist form their consciences and lives. Magnifica humanitas is Leo’s first encyclical since turning into pope final yr, and its launch now underscores the main target the brand new pope is placing on AI and expertise. Notably, Leo additionally used the event to make a historic formal apology for the Church’s earlier protection and justification of slavery — a reminder that the Catholic Church has not all the time been on the appropriate facet of social ills.

Although popes are historically not current through the launch of those paperwork, which first started within the 18th century, Leo XIV was in attendance at its presentation, and delivered his personal feedback — one thing Vatican observers indicated mirrored his want to verify the Church’s stance was correctly understood. The Chicago-born pontiff spoke in English and was joined by AI consultants and business leaders, together with Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, who consulted on the doc.

So how ought to the general public course of and take into consideration this new doc? It’s useful to first perceive the context by which the Church is talking up about this in any respect.

Why the Catholic Church cares a lot about AI’s growth

Magnifica humanitas is dropping greater than per week after Pope Leo XIV really signed it on Could 15. The timing issues.

That day marked 135 years because the launch of Rerum Novarum, the seminal work of Pope Leo XIII, the present pope’s namesake, who was main the church through the late levels of the Industrial Revolution. As they’re right now, the devoted, and the clergy, had been going through a quickly altering world. And the Church, the world’s main ethical authority on the time, had but to ascertain its place in it.

That Nineteenth-century doc made philosophical arguments concerning the relationship between labor and capital, warning concerning the perils of communism. However it additionally redefined the church’s relationship to the fashionable world, with the papacy reasserting itself as each a supply of energy and an ethical authority in an period of fast change. The encyclical set a template for a way a 2,000-year-old establishment might nonetheless stay related in a contemporary age.

In presenting this encyclical, Pope Leo XIV made this parallel clear. He sees the rise of synthetic intelligence because the defining world problem of the day, and of his preach: “Like the sooner Leo, I really feel entrusted to look upon one other large transformation with eyes of religion, with lucidity of purpose, with openness to thriller and with cries of the poor and the earth resounding in my coronary heart,” the pope mentioned whereas presenting his encyclical.

The newer encyclical builds off his predecessor’s custom, and the assorted arguments popes have made concerning the significance of preserving the dignity of the human particular person and valuing trendy expertise solely as long as it advantages everybody, not simply its creators or the wealthy.

In 2015, Pope Francis, for instance, wrote about “the technocratic paradigm” that has taken root in trendy capitalism: the sense that technological progress is unstoppable, that it’ll demand limitless concessions from nature and from individuals, and that the world had no alternative however to submit to vary.

“Leo is anxious that we don’t simply undergo inevitability on questions of AI, however ask vital questions and push again in methods which are crucial earlier than it’s too late to push again, earlier than injury is finished that may’t simply be undone,” Dan Rober, an affiliate professor of Catholic Research at Sacred Coronary heart College, informed me.

That position of questioning, pausing, and coming to consensus has outlined the Catholic Church’s management and operation for the final two papacies: the notion of synodality, or instructing and making choices primarily based on consensus. Earlier than AI and the technologists who’ve created it grow to be the only real determinants of how politics, the economic system, and society operates, the Church is asserting itself as a counterweight — even because it consists of a few of these leaders within the course of.

“Pope Leo is attempting to obviously stroll in these footsteps, and I believe he’s very involved, as are lots of people, concerning the doable implications, notably for job markets and for individuals’s existence being sustainable daily with the rise of AI programs which will render a sure important quantity of jobs capable of be automated very quickly,” Rober mentioned.

This type of reflection has grow to be customary process for the Vatican. Since at the least the flip of the century, the Church has discovered itself more and more weighing in on the crises of the day, albeit usually a bit too late.

Because the Catholic author Christopher Hale has famous, “Francis took up the local weather struggle with Laudato Si in 2015, after a long time of scientific consensus had been ignored. Benedict XVI took up the worldwide financial order with Caritas in Veritate in 2009, after the monetary system had already collapsed. Each paperwork arrived within the lengthy shadow of the crises they addressed.”

In Magnifica humanitas, Pope Leo XIV could also be searching for to intervene early within the growth or takeover of a brand new expertise this time, and present that the Church needs to each work with Silicon Valley and assert itself as a robust defender of contemporary values, because it has completed in its protection of the liberal worldwide order and facets of humanism, like human autonomy and purpose.

Within the background, there’s additionally a extra sci-fi aspect: the notion that AI might find yourself coming between the Church and the individuals — serving as a filter or layer between common individuals and God, and even perhaps usurping the position of the Church itself. The Catholic Church, famously, is anxious with the right interpretation of scripture, Biblical truths, ethics, and God. Bloody wars waged and hard-fought reformations turned on this central query of who and the way one can commune with God. Now, AI enters as one other intermediary.

“That’s intently associated to the query of individuals utilizing AI as a therapist,” Rober informed me. “You could possibly see a method by which AI turns into its personal form of faith, and positively the way in which plenty of the Silicon Valley founders speak about it, it does have non secular overtones to it. You take heed to the Google founders discuss concerning the singularity, and that sounds lots like faith.”

It’s on this context that this doc, and its particular teachings, lands.

What the Church is instructing about AI

Magnifica Humanitas just isn’t the Vatican’s first examination of the position of AI in trendy life.

Simply final yr, within the twilight of Pope Francis’s preach, the Vatican launched a instructing notice, Antiqua et nova, that laid the groundwork for Leo’s encyclical. That 2025 doc established that the Church just isn’t against the event of AI: technological progress and scientific discoveries are a part of the pure method that people are supposed to honor God, his creation of humanity in his picture, and the pure outpouring of God’s present of purpose and rationality.

However it additionally established a distinction between human intelligence and machines that analyze information and carry out processes. It insisted that synthetic intelligence, like all expertise, ought to serve humanity, not the opposite method round. And it emphasised the danger that new expertise poses to the power to, proper to, and dignity of labor, particularly for the least effectively off in society.

Within the encyclical, Leo makes use of the biblical parable of the Tower of Babel — a warning about human hubris — to make this case: “We should, then, keep away from the ‘Babel syndrome,’ specifically the idolatry of revenue that sacrifices the weak,” he writes. “The danger of dehumanization — of constructing a future that excludes God and reduces the opposite to a method — is an historical and ever-new temptation that right now takes on a technical guise.”

This builds off of an extended custom of specializing in not simply the dignity of labor and staff, but additionally more moderen issues that trendy capitalism facilitates a “throwaway tradition” that views individuals and issues as, at finest, cogs within the service of a better machine.

“He needs to speak about the concept that our humanity is significant in and of itself and that work is a part of that, even when AI programs are capable of enable for extra leisure and even when one thing like common primary earnings had been to be made accessible, individuals want to search out to have work of some type to have that means of their lives,” Rober mentioned.

The encyclical’s teachings could be damaged up into three broad classes: laws on how AI is developed and the way people undertake it, the responses required to deal with the financial results of AI, and limits on AI’s utilization in battle.

The sensible suggestions and issues Leo outlines embody:

From an eagle-eye view, the doc is pretty wonky and detailed: involved with very sensible issues and particular suggestions that might have come from academia, or a secular background — underscoring simply how a lot Leo might hope it may possibly present steering for leaders and people, versus remaining siloed to the mental class. In order this expertise continues to develop, the pope and the church wish to assist form it. They need the devoted to be reminded that no matter AI affords just isn’t actuality, not personhood, and never God. It’s a software that ought to not dominate or decide the lives of its customers. And it shouldn’t change the position of the Church in instructing morality and ethics.

For the better secular world, the Church needs to remind the general public that they need to have a say in how AI shapes their world; they need to not enable enterprise and tech leaders to outline the phrases of existence by their machines; and that they’ve a robust ally within the Roman Catholic Church within the effort to protect human dignity within the face of unprecedented technological change.