The Catholic Church just dropped a 42,300-word policy paper on artificial intelligence. And yes, it has a tech co-author.
Pope Leo XIV released his inaugural encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on May 25, 2026, laying out what might be the most comprehensive religious framework for thinking about AI, digital assets, and the moral obligations that come with building world-altering technology. The document was co-presented by Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, the AI safety company behind the Claude model.
What the encyclical actually says
The core argument of Magnifica Humanitas is that AI, left unchecked, risks creating what Leo XIV calls “new forms of slavery.” He’s not speaking abstractly. The encyclical points to specific labor conditions: low-wage data processing jobs, content moderation work that exposes workers to traumatic material, and the rare-earth mining operations that supply the hardware powering the AI boom.
Beyond labor exploitation, the document flags several other concerns. The concentration of AI power among a handful of private entities. Job displacement from automation. The deployment of AI in military applications, particularly autonomous weapons systems. And perhaps most philosophically, the erosion of human relationships and personal agency when algorithms increasingly mediate how people live, work, and connect.
The encyclical was signed on May 15, 2026, a date chosen deliberately. It marks the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, the landmark 1891 encyclical that addressed labor rights during the Industrial Revolution. Leo XIV is explicitly positioning his document as a continuation of that tradition: Catholic social teaching updated for an era where the factory floor has been replaced by the data center.
The Vatican event itself was announced publicly around May 18, drawing attention from both religious communities and the tech world.
Crypto gets a mention too
Here’s where it gets interesting for the digital asset world. Magnifica Humanitas doesn’t limit itself to AI. The encyclical explicitly discusses cryptocurrencies and digital property as emerging forms of ownership that carry moral implications.
The framework Leo XIV applies is the Catholic principle of the “universal destination of goods,” the idea that the earth’s resources are ultimately meant for the benefit of all humanity, not just those who hold title to them. It doesn’t condemn crypto outright, but it firmly rejects the notion that property rights are absolute and beyond moral scrutiny.
Within the first month of the encyclical’s release, no significant shifts in crypto trading volumes or prices were observed.
A token called $HUMANITAS has already appeared, inspired by the encyclical.