Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical on May 25, a 245-paragraph document dedicated entirely to artificial intelligence that demands tighter oversight of Big Tech and classifies data as a shared human resource. The document, Magnifica Humanitas ("Magnificent Humanity"), was released at the Vatican's Synod Hall. Pope Leo signed it on May 15, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum—the 1891 encyclical by Pope Leo XIII on labor rights that became the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching. Pope Leo has consistently framed AI as the defining moral challenge of his papacy, comparing the coming social upheaval to that of the Industrial Revolution.
Technology Is Never Neutral
The encyclical argues that "technology is never neutral" because it absorbs the values, blind spots, and economic incentives of whoever builds it. Every algorithm reflects the priorities of the people who designed, funded, and deployed it. The document covers AI in warfare, dehumanization, technocracy, data colonialism, child safety online, mass unemployment, disinformation, autonomous weapons, and transhumanism. The core argument tying these topics together is that building systems that pretend to neutrality doesn't eliminate bias—it just hides it.
Data as a Common Good
Catholic social teaching has long held that the earth's natural resources are intended for all of humanity, not private owners. The encyclical extends that principle directly to the digital economy. Algorithms, platforms, and data must be governed as common goods, not locked behind commercial walls by a few companies. "Data is the product of many contributors and should not be treated as something to be sold off or entrusted to a select few," the pope writes.
Subsidiarity and Distributed Governance
The encyclical applies subsidiarity—the principle that decisions should be made at the most local level possible—to tech platforms specifically. Rather than calling for top-down regulation alone, the document advocates for transparent algorithms, independent community audits, and real legal power for people to challenge automated systems that affect their credit scores, job applications, or criminal risk assessments. Without that distributed oversight, the encyclical argues, governance of AI becomes a form of digital authoritarianism that silences the populations it claims to serve.
Against Transhumanism
The encyclical takes aim at transhumanism—the idea that human limitation and vulnerability are flaws to be engineered away. The pope counters that finitude is not a bug; it is what makes empathy, moral judgment, and genuine care for other people possible. Systems built to optimize it out do not produce a better human. They produce something that evaluates and excludes the vulnerable more efficiently.
The pope is careful not to anthropomorphize the technology. AI systems "do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain," the encyclical states. AI systems lack the lived experience that produces real understanding. They can simulate empathy and produce convincing language, but they do not comprehend what they output. When an algorithm makes hiring decisions, sets credit terms, or assigns a risk score in a courtroom, its apparent objectivity obscures the choices baked in by its designers. The encyclical warns specifically against delegating sensitive decisions to automated systems that "do not know compassion, mercy, forgiveness" and against treating the result as neutral just because a machine produced it.
Anthropic Co-Founder Speaks at Vatican Launch
Christopher Olah—co-founder of Anthropic and head of its interpretability research team—spoke at the Synod Hall presentation alongside two Vatican cardinals and a pair of theologians. Olah stated openly that every major AI lab "operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing," and that outside scrutiny—from governments, religious institutions, and civil society—is not optional. He flagged AI-driven labor displacement as a near-term risk that, if it materializes at scale, would create "a moral imperative of historic proportions."
The pope had already written the harder version of that argument. "A more moral AI is not enough," the encyclical states, if the morality behind it is set exclusively by whoever controls the data and the compute. Leo made the same case directly to Silicon Valley executives at the Vatican in November 2025.
Vatican AI Commission Established
The Vatican approved a new internal AI commission on May 16 drawing from seven departments to coordinate AI governance work across the Holy See going forward.
