The extensive coverage in the Catholic press of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical was hardly surprising. Particularly impressive, however, was how much interest and coverage the document garnered in the secular media. Within hours, publications, websites and media outlets around the world posted, printed and broadcast substantial treatments of “Magnifica Humanitas.”
On the very next day after the encyclical dropped (with a dramatic and unprecedented “launch event” featuring Pope Leo himself and Christopher Olah, co-founder of the tech firm Anthropic), The New York Times print edition featured two separate articles on the encyclical. The first (“Pope, In Encyclical, Offers a Map for Navigating the Perils of A.I.” co-authored by three veteran reporters) offered detailed coverage that was perhaps to be expected of “the paper of record,” though its placement on the front page made a strong impression.
The second, “The Pope Has a Few Words About the Rise of A.I.,” was written by the Silicon Valley-based journalist David Streitfeld and filled much of the front page of the business section. It also bore a long and mischievous subtitle: “The pontiff wants to take artificial intelligence down a peg. Is he challenging the tech companies, or will tech take over the papacy?”
It was not the only coverage of Pope Leo’s encyclical in the secular media that raised an eyebrow or two, as many commentators praised or dismissed Leo’s message with a fair amount of attitude. News analyses and op-eds from all over the religious and ideological spectrum followed in rapid succession. So much to read at such a pivotal time!
Whether or not one fully approves of the overall message and project of Leo, it is undeniable that the American pontiff took head-on the task suggested by the document’s subtitle: “On the Safeguarding of the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” To be a constructive force, A.I. requires a steady human hand to guide and direct it, providing guardrails so that it does not further concentrate economic and political power in fewer and fewer hands. Ever the deliberate moral leader, Leo draws measured judgments about the features, promises and risks associated with the advanced technology revolution that is rapidly reshaping the ways we communicate, work and govern.
Should anyone need a reminder that the use of technology involves moral questions beyond mere technical ones, Leo makes his argument in a firm and forthright way: Artificial intelligence must be made to serve humanity and its noble ways of working and loving; algorithms must not be allowed to foster exclusion, domination and armed conflict. In style, Leo splits the difference between the idealism of prophetic witness and the realism of prudent attention to the workings of established institutions, ever eager to respect the inherent tensions between these two poles of accustomed papal discourse.
Like Pope Francis before him (who in “Laudato Si’” warned of the serious shortcomings of a narrow technocratic rationality), Pope Leo cannot be painted as a mere Luddite who would reject all innovation out of hand. Leo is not anti-tech in any simple sense. Rather, he acknowledges numerous nuances of the contemporary challenge to hold scientific advances to standards of moral accountability. On one hand, he affirms that “technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity”; on the other hand, he cautions against warped priorities such as “the pursuit of greater profits [that] cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.”
Above all, Leo is keen to highlight the many ways in which even the most advanced artificial intelligence remains fundamentally different from humanity—lacking sentience and unable ever to substitute for such wonders as human creativity, care and love. He insists:
So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.
Humanity is, well, magnificent—in ways that are unique. Our tools cannot hold a candle to our souls and our God-given dignity.
Making serious moral interventions by warning of new threats to human dignity has been part of the papal playbook for at least 135 years, ever since the previous Pope Leo (XIII, that is) laid out in 1891 a variety of moral concerns associated with the Industrial Revolution of his time: starvation wages, long and inflexible working hours, dangerous working conditions, the inability for workers to benefit from collective bargaining with their greedy employers.
The new challenges wrought by rapid advances in artificial intelligence are even more dire, and even more urgently in need of moral guidance. Following the pattern of social encyclicals in general, Leo is not so much providing hard-and-fast conclusions regarding specific programs of robust regulation and safeguards as he is raising salient questions regarding the values that should inform our collective responses to the introduction of new technologies that radically change the shape of our world.
Leo’s project is to help us form our consciences on how we will opt to relate to new technologies—in the workplace, in schools, in our choices in civic life and even entertainment. To invoke a paired set of verbs employed to good effect by Saint John Paul II, Leo seeks to propose constructive approaches, not to impose pre-packaged solutions to new social challenges.
Whatever shortcomings surface in this document pertain to its ambition and sheer length; perhaps Pope Leo is simply trying to accomplish too much and at greater length (42,000 words, in 245 paragraphs, with 224 footnotes) than would be optimal. But that also might lead us to two further reflections on the nature of the document.
First, Leo spends about 60 paragraphs (most of the document’s first two chapters, out of five) recounting the inheritance of previous Catholic social doctrine, surveying the tradition document by document and then going back over much of the same ground theme by theme. Popes certainly do love to demonstrate the continuity of their teachings with previous expressions. John XXIII opened his 1961 encyclical “Mater et Magistra” with a similar review in about 50 paragraphs, and John Paull II folded into two social encyclicals substantial surveys of past teachings on social justice.
And of course, Leo is not merely clearing his throat while rehearsing the contributions of his predecessors. His long review of where the church has been on “the social question” provides him with leverage to launch his critique of the potential deleterious effects of artificial intelligence if it is not contained by prudent guardrails. Along the way, he explains highly relevant principles such as subsidiarity, social solidarity, integral human development and the universal destination of created goods—each of which should play a key role in guiding our conscience in the project of restraining new technologies. It takes considerable space to develop these points of course, and we should all join Leo in hoping that his readers will muster the patience to stay with the long arc of his arguments.
Second, lengthy documents like “Magnifica Humanitas” exhibit a tendency to bury some of the best material in a prolonged flurry of words. Early commentators on the text have been astonished by two momentous messages that deserve particular attention. One is the pope’s calling just war theory “outdated” (No. 192). This represents a significant development in how the church expresses its longstanding opposition to war, though still signaling in the text a continued recognition of the right to self-defense. The second startling message is a full-throated apology (and direct request for forgiveness) for the centuries-long role of the Catholic Church in enabling (and even promoting) the slave trade and the practice of chattel slavery (No. 176).
Each represents a significant further development of previous papal positions, stated with more directness and conviction than ever before, and each surely deserves its own papal document. Both are indeed related to the main thrust of an encyclical on the moral challenges raised by technologies that bring the risk of an escalation of uncontrollably lethal warfare and threaten to introduce new types of modern-day slavery. But, as compelling as those linkages surely are, the placement of these historic statements in the latter sections of this very long text has the unfortunate effect of diminishing their impact.
But what of the encyclical’s larger impact? Leo certainly recognizes that rapid technological advances have a way of unleashing disruptive forces upon all they touch. For human societies to adapt successfully and to minimize the resultant harm, robust regulation needs to be conceived and enacted. While no religious leader can singlehandedly design and mandate detailed policies regarding A.I., Leo came into the papacy well positioned to be the moral leader we sorely need at this pivotal moment. He is fortunate to have inherited two promising assets.
The first is an admirable seriousness of purpose and ethical orientation informed by his Augustinian spiritual roots. The second is a full decade of serious Vatican study and consideration of these very matters. The momentum toward full attention to moral alignment in tech policy that was kicked off by Pope Francis in the early years of his own papacy has continued with the publication of such recent Vatican documents as “Quo Vadis, Humanitas?” and “Antiqua et Nova.” The former was subtitled “Thinking about Christian Anthropology in the Face of Some Scenarios on the Future of Humanity” and the latter “On the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence.”
The Holy See has already announced the creation of a commission of senior Catholic officials from several dicasteries to continue the study and conversation regarding the challenges posed by A.I. Perhaps future rounds of church deliberation on advanced information technologies will specify the meaning of Leo’s provocative call in the encyclical to “disarm A.I.” (No. 110). All this bodes well for further momentous social teachings in the course of Leo’s papacy in the years ahead.
This article appears in July/August 2026.
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