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Why the Catholic Church is concerned about Big Tech.

Monday morning, the Roman Catholic Church made its biggest foray yet into the discourse on artificial intelligence and the role it should play in human life as the technology develops.

In the first encyclical of his papacy, titled Magnifica humanitas (Latin for “magnificent humanity”), Pope Leo XIV argued that AI is not intrinsically immoral, but that its adoption needed to be slowed in order to build moral guardrails, to establish better social safety nets for those displaced by economic and labor disruptions, and to create democratic processes that will ensure the public remains in control of these developments, rather than a small subset of tech oligarchs. The document also contended that the “intelligence” in artificial intelligence was a misnomer: Intelligence is something only human persons possess, and technology will never be human.

The first encyclical, or official teaching letter, of Leo XIV’s papacy, dropped Monday.

It centers the uniqueness of humanity, the dignity of work, and the challenges that artificial intelligence poses to the world order and humans’ relationships with each other and God.

The Catholic Church has a long tradition of reasserting authority in the modern era, starting with the current pope’s namesake, Leo XIII, who confronted the rise of the Industrial Revolution and changing global economies.

There are deeper spiritual and material reasons the pope, and the church, are so concerned with AI now.

Encyclicals are official teaching documents of the Catholic Church: letters issued by popes to bishops after consultation with theologians, historians, and experts on pressing matters that affect humanity or the church, with the expectation that all people, faithful or secular, can learn from them and help shape their consciences and lives. Magnifica humanitas is Leo’s first encyclical since becoming pope last year, and its release now underscores the focus the new pope is putting on AI and technology. Notably, Leo also used the occasion to make a historic formal apology for the Church’s previous defense and justification of slavery — a reminder that the Catholic Church has not always been on the right side of social ills.

Though popes are traditionally not present during the release of these documents, which first began in the 18th century, Leo XIV was in attendance at its presentation, and delivered his own comments — something Vatican observers indicated reflected his desire to make sure the Church’s stance was properly understood. The Chicago-born pontiff spoke in English and was joined by AI experts and industry leaders, including Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, who consulted on the document.

So how should the public process and think about this new document? It’s helpful to first understand the context in which the Church is speaking up about this at all.

Why the Catholic Church cares so much about AI’s development

Magnifica humanitas is dropping more than a week after Pope Leo XIV actually signed it on May 15. The timing matters.

That day marked 135 years since the release of Rerum Novarum, the seminal work of Pope Leo XIII, the current pope’s namesake, who was leading the church during the late stages of the Industrial Revolution. As they are today, the faithful, and the clergy, were facing a rapidly changing world. And the Church, the world’s leading moral authority at the time, had yet to establish its place in it.

That........

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