Pope Leo XIV signed his first encyclical on May 15, the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum. The document, Magnifica humanitas, was published on May 25 and addresses one of the defining challenges of our time: artificial intelligence and its impact on humanity.
The core message isn’t anti-technology. The Pope is clear that technology is neither a threat nor inherently evil. However, he does say that technology is never neutral, because it takes on the values of those who build, fund, and control it. That’s where things get interesting.
Is AI becoming a tool for the powerful?
A significant portion of the encyclical deals with the concentration of AI in the hands of a few. Pope Leo XIV warns that this risks widening the gap between those included and those excluded from the digital revolution. He calls for ethical standards shaped not by a handful of decision-makers, but by shared principles of social justice.
He also takes aim at the use of AI in warfare, writing that there is no algorithm that can make war morally acceptable. He argues that AI makes conflict faster, more impersonal, and lowers the threshold for resorting to violence, which is not progress in any meaningful sense of the word.
The timing of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical is hard to ignore. In July 2025, the US Department of Defense awarded contracts to Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI to integrate frontier AI into military operations, ranging from battlefield decision-making to classified intelligence systems.
Anthropic eventually walked away from its deal in early 2026, citing concerns over autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, which promptly earned it a ban by the Trump administration. OpenAI stepped in almost immediately, signing its own Pentagon deal, which resulted in a massive backlash from its users, resulting in the mass uninstallation of its app.
By April 2026, the Pentagon had signed fresh classified AI contracts with OpenAI, Google, and others. It’s clear that Pope is not happy with these developments and is calling out the US government indirectly to stop making use of AI in warfare.
Where does the Pope want us to go from here?
The crux of the entire encyclical is that the Pope wants technology to serve people, not the other way around. He calls for better labor protections, transparency in communication, renewed attention to schools, and legal frameworks that hold AI development accountable.
He also singles out migrants, workers in dangerous conditions, and victims of abuse as groups that need our empathy and protection. At its heart, Magnifica humanitas is a reminder that no matter how advanced technology gets, the measure of progress will still be a human one.
