With the most authoritative document yet of his still-young pontificate, Pope Leo XIV directed the Catholic Church’s moral gaze toward the frantic pace of technological development that threatens human solidarity. With AI as its entry point, Leo used his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence, to articulate the church’s position on a wide range of contemporary crises, including war, modern slavery, wealth inequality, the erosion of democracy and the devaluing of human capacities.
Leo takes aim not at a particular type of AI, but instead explores the effects of technologies that “merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence” and draws a distinction between human beings and machines.
“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,” Leo writes.
The encyclical, among the most authoritative forms of papal teaching, was presented at the Vatican on May 25 during an event featuring testimony from the pope himself, prominent cardinals and theologians, and a co-founder of the AI company Anthropic, Christopher Olah, who leads its interpretability team.
The document is the fruit of 10 years of dialogue on ethics between the Vatican and the tech industry, a source engaged in the church’s outreach to the tech industry but not authorized to speak publicly on the encyclical said ahead of its release. Tech leaders “were interested in wisdom from the church” regarding “how best to serve humanity,” the source said. “We are trying to engage all these companies with the wisdom of the church and the wisdom of anybody of goodwill.”
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With thanks to National Catholic Reporter and Justin McLellan, where this article originally appeared.
