On 25 May 2026, Pope Leo XIV presented his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. The document was released at the Vatican and presented at 11.30 a.m. in the Synod Hall. It had been signed ten days earlier, on 15 May 2026, deliberately marking the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, published on 15 May 1891.
The address was given at the launch of the encyclical. Its purpose was not to offer technical answers about artificial intelligence, but to place AI within a moral and human framework. The Pope was speaking to scientists, engineers, political leaders, public officials, parents, teachers, and the wider human family. His central question was how humanity should find its way in an age when artificial intelligence is beginning to shape decisions, relationships, war, employment, health care, education, public life, and even our understanding of the human person.
The main points of the address may be summarised as follows.
- The Church must respond to the great transformations of history.
Pope Leo XIV presents artificial intelligence as one of the decisive changes of our age. He argues that the Church cannot remain distant when a new technology begins to reshape human life. This is why he compares the present moment with the age of industrial capitalism addressed by Pope Leo XIII. - The reference to Leo XIII is central.
In 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum, usually translated as “Of New Things.” It did not appear at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. By then, the early abuses of industrialisation — child labour, brutal factory conditions, urban overcrowding, slum poverty, and the uprooting of older rural communities — had been visible for many decades. What Rerum Novarum addressed was the mature social crisis produced by industrial capitalism: the conflict between capital and labour, the vulnerability of wage-earners, the growth of socialist movements, and the need to defend the dignity of workers without reducing society either to laissez-faire economics or class warfare. - AI may be a comparable turning point.
Pope Leo XIV’s argument is not that AI is simply another industrial machine. His point is that AI may become a new organising power in human affairs. It is already beginning to affect employment, war, education, health care, surveillance, public administration, and personal decision-making. The question is therefore not merely what AI can do, but what kind of human order it will serve. - The address is not anti-technology.
The Pope does not condemn artificial intelligence as such. He recognises that AI can assist human beings and may help relieve suffering. His concern is that technology of such power must not be left to technical enthusiasm, private profit, military logic, or administrative convenience. - Human dignity is the central test.
The Pope insists that artificial intelligence must be judged in the light of the human person. A person must not be reduced to data, productivity, measurable intelligence, usefulness, or economic value. Human beings possess freedom, interiority, conscience, and the vocation to love and worship. No machine can replace these things. - “Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.”
This is the strongest phrase in the address. The Pope does not mean that AI should simply be abolished. He means that it must be freed from the logic of domination, exclusion, and death. He compares this to the Church’s concern with nuclear disarmament. Like nuclear energy, AI is a form of technical power. Such power requires moral discernment, public control, and responsibility. - The dangers are already visible.
The Pope refers to autonomous weapons systems that may become almost impossible for human beings to govern effectively. He also refers to algorithms that may block access to health care, employment, or security because they are built on data marked by prejudice or injustice. He is especially concerned for those who have no voice when decisions are made, although those decisions may affect their lives deeply. - The deeper danger is unaccountable power.
The Pope is not merely worried about machines becoming clever. He is worried about power becoming more remote, less accountable, and less human. Algorithmic decisions can appear neutral and efficient while concealing the prejudices, interests, or assumptions built into them. In this way, AI may create new forms of exclusion precisely because it presents itself as impersonal. - Disarming is not enough: humanity must also build.
The Pope uses the image of rebuilding after floods in Peru, where he had served as a missionary. Rebuilding, he says, does not merely mean replacing what has been destroyed. It means repairing bonds, restoring trust, and reawakening hope. He applies this image to the technological future. AI must be part of building a more human society, not merely a more efficient one. - The image of Nehemiah gives the address a biblical frame.
The Pope refers to Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. This image is not used to justify withdrawal or exclusion, but to show that a just society is built through shared labour. Each person has a part to play. Applied to AI, this means that the future cannot be left only to engineers, corporations, governments, armies, or wealthy nations. - Those affected by AI must be heard.
The Pope insists that designers and users, rich countries and poorer countries, institutions and individuals, centres of power and the peripheries must all be involved. AI must not become a project imposed from above by those who own the systems and control the data. - AI must serve the common good.
The Pope’s social vision is clear. Artificial intelligence must not be developed only for the privileged few. It must not become another instrument by which wealthy countries, powerful corporations, or administrative elites consolidate their advantage. It must serve the dignity and flourishing of all. - The Church’s contribution is moral rather than technical.
Pope Leo XIV says that the Church does not possess the technical answers. It does not claim to know how to code the systems or solve every engineering problem. Its task is to keep the question of the human person at the centre. This is its distinctive contribution to the AI debate. - The address belongs to the tradition of Catholic social teaching.
In 1891, Leo XIII asked how the Church should respond to the industrial age. In 2026, Leo XIV asks how humanity should respond to the age of artificial intelligence. In both cases, technology and economic power must be placed under moral judgement. They must serve the human person, not diminish him. - The Pope ends with a call to vigilance and hope.
The address closes not with technical certainty, but with wakefulness. The Pope echoes St Paul: “Let us not sleep as others do.” The age of artificial intelligence requires citizens, churches, governments, teachers, parents, scientists, and ordinary people to ask what kind of humanity we are building.
The central message is therefore plain. Artificial intelligence is not merely a technical development. It is a moral test. It can serve human life, but only if it is governed by conscience, justice, responsibility, and the common good. The machine may calculate, but it cannot decide what is sacred. That responsibility remains ours.
