Editor’s Note: On May 25, 2026, the Vatican issued Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: Safeguarding Humanity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. The timing of this document—released on the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum—was clearly no coincidence: if Rerum Novarum was the Catholic Church’s response to the Industrial Revolution, Magnifica Humanitas is regarded as the Church’s formal statement on the AI era.
The most noteworthy aspect of this launch is not just the Pope equating AI with nuclear weapons and calling for AI to be "disarmed," nor is it merely Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah appearing in person at the Vatican; rather, it is the first time that religion, philosophy, and cutting-edge AI labs have directly confronted the same question: When AI is transforming labor, warfare, wealth distribution, and human self-understanding, can technology companies and market competition alone determine its future?
The article outlines 11 key details from the announcement: from the historical metaphor behind the name "Leo XIV," to how the Church has responded once again to a major technological shift following the Industrial Revolution, nuclear weapons, and the climate crisis; from Olah’s description of AI models as “grown from human language,” to his acknowledgment that AI labs cannot alone answer questions such as how poor nations can benefit, what human flourishing means, and what we are truly creating.
The following is the original text:
The Pope and the co-founder of Anthropic stood together at the Vatican to release Magnifica Humanitas—the first official doctrinal document on artificial intelligence in Catholic history.
Yes, you read that right. The entire launch event lasted two hours.
Here are the key points to pay attention to:
1. This is by far the most significant response from the religious community to AI. The Pope typically issues only a few such highly significant formal documents during his entire papacy, and the fact that one of them is dedicated specifically to AI underscores the Church’s profound seriousness in addressing the changes ahead.
2. A small but significant detail is that the Pope deliberately chose the name "Leo XIV." The previous Pope named Leo was Leo XIII in 1891, whose most notable action was writing the Catholic Church’s response to the Industrial Revolution. By choosing the same name again, this is a very clear signal: the Pope views AI as the new Industrial Revolution.
3. Whenever major technologies reshape human society, the Catholic Church responds. In 1891, they responded to the Industrial Revolution with Rerum Novarum; in the 1960s, amid the threat of nuclear weapons, they wrote Pacem in Terris; in 2015, climate change and runaway technology inspired Laudato Si’. Now, it is AI’s turn, with the document titled Magnifica Humanitas. Such documents are uncommon.
4. The Pope’s core statement is: “AI needs to be disarmed.” He explicitly equates AI with nuclear weapons, stating that the Church spent decades advocating for nuclear disarmament because such technology is too dangerous to be controlled by only a few. Now, he believes AI has entered the same category of risk.
5. At the Vatican, Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah told the Pope that Anthropic’s own research team continually discovers within AI models things that “reflect joy, satisfaction, fear, sadness, and unease.”
6. Olah redefined the nature of AI: these systems are not simply built, but rather更像是 "grown." They are trained on architectures that roughly mimic the structure of the human brain and are fed nearly everything humans have ever written. In his own words: "They are made of us, made of our language." He also noted that even those who build these systems do not fully understand what is happening within them.
7. Olah openly acknowledged that all AI labs, including Anthropic itself, face pressures that may conflict with “doing the right thing”: commercial pressure to continuously release products, competition from other labs, and older tendencies of arrogance and ambition. His proposed solution is: we urgently need independent external critics with no vested interests to directly point out when labs go astray.
8. Olah believes there are three major issues that AI labs cannot answer on their own, and that the world needs religion and philosophy to address:
How can we ensure that poor countries truly benefit from AI?
What does human prosperity really mean in this new world?
And what exactly are we creating?
One of the sharpest statements in the entire encyclical is: "The promise of automatic universal prosperity has often proven to be an illusion." In other words, the belief that AI will automatically make everyone wealthy is itself an illusion. Someone must genuinely design a system that ensures the benefits of technology are shared.
10. The Pope also quoted a statement from a century ago: “Modern people have not yet been adequately trained to use power responsibly.” This remark comes from a theologian of the 1920s. The entire encyclical revolves around one central argument: before this power begins to dominate us, we must first learn how to wield it.
11. The Pope repeatedly emphasized that he does not hold technical answers. However, he stated that the Church possesses thousands of years of wisdom regarding “what it means to be human”—wisdom that is precisely the most lacking element in today’s AI development. He concluded by writing: “This technology must serve the flourishing and dignity of the human person, not the control of human conscience.”