Pope Leo XIV Urges Tech Leaders to ‘Disarm’ AI in Encyclical

In an unprecedented intervention that bridges faith and technology, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical on May 25, 2026 — Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence — becoming the first pope in history to personally present a papal encyclical. Sharing the stage at the Vatican’s Synod Hall was Christopher Olah, the 33-year-old atheist co-founder of AI company Anthropic, in a striking display of the Church’s determination to engage directly with the tech industry on the ethical boundaries of artificial intelligence.

The approximately 42,300-word document, signed on the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s landmark social encyclical Rerum Novarum, is being described by Vatican officials not merely as an “AI encyclical” but as a comprehensive social teaching document that uses artificial intelligence as its central case study — much as Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ addressed the environment within a broader framework of Catholic social thought.

A Call to ‘Disarm’ AI

At the heart of the encyclical is a powerful metaphor: the call to “disarm” artificial intelligence. “To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity,” the Pope writes, according to National Catholic Reporter. The framework reframes the AI debate from one of technological progress versus caution to one of power and domination, arguing that AI must be freed from an “armed” logic of military, economic, and cognitive competition.

The encyclical warns against the concentration of technological power in the hands of a few private actors, noting that the main drivers of AI development today are “private, often transnational, parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments.” The full text of the encyclical is available on the Vatican’s official website.

An Unprecedented Partnership

The decision to invite an atheist AI co-founder to share the stage during a papal encyclical presentation was deliberate and historically significant. A senior Vatican source acknowledged the unusual nature of the arrangement, signaling Pope Leo’s willingness to engage directly with the tech industry rather than issuing top-down pronouncements.

Olah, who leads Anthropic’s interpretability team, used the platform to call for external moral oversight of the tech industry. “It is enormously important that there be people outside those incentives [of the tech industry] — people who care about things going well and insist on safety, who are paying close attention, who are willing to say hard things, who are willing to be our earnest, thoughtful, critics,” Olah said, according to remarks published on Anthropic’s website. He added: “We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing. We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.”

Fr. Brendan McGuire, a Silicon Valley parish priest engaged in Vatican dialogue with the tech industry, told Vatican News that “tech industry leaders see something in what they’re developing that is concerning them, maybe even frightening them. What they have asked for is partnership, and it would be morally reprehensible for us to not partner with them.”

Just War Theory Declared ‘Outdated’

In one of the encyclical’s most politically charged passages, Pope Leo XIV declares that the “just war” theory “is now outdated” due to technological developments, calling instead for dialogue, diplomacy, and forgiveness. The statement comes amid ongoing controversy over the U.S.-led war in Iran, during which Vice President JD Vance — a Catholic — had publicly questioned the Pope’s understanding of just war theory.

The encyclical also delivers a sweeping condemnation of autonomous weapons: “It is not permissible to entrust lethal or otherwise irreversible decisions to artificial systems,” the Pope writes, warning of “increasingly autonomous weapons systems practically beyond any human reach to govern them effectively.”

A Historic Apology for Slavery

Embedded within the document is a formal apology for the Church’s historical delay in condemning slavery — a more comprehensive mea culpa than previous papal statements. “It took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon,” the Pope writes, according to National Catholic Reporter. By connecting the AI ethics debate to historical patterns of exploitation, the encyclical suggests that technological development risks repeating past injustices.

Economic and Labor Concerns

Citing a 2025 MIT study estimating that AI could replace 11.7% of the U.S. workforce, the Pope calls mass unemployment a “grave evil” and “social calamity.” The encyclical urges moving beyond GDP as a measure of development and insists that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means.”

Data as a Common Good

The encyclical argues that data “cannot be left solely in private hands” and should be regulated as a shared good, warning against a “new form of colonialism” that turns personal lives into exploitable information. “Technology is never neutral,” the Pope writes, “because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.”

Philosophical Dimensions: Transhumanism and the Human Person

Pope Leo also takes on transhumanism and posthumanism — the philosophical movements that treat human limitations as problems to be solved through technology. “So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean,” he writes, positioning the Church as a defender of human embodiment and finitude against technological utopianism.

What’s Next

The Pope has approved the creation of an Interdicasterial Commission on AI, signaling that the Vatican intends to remain actively engaged in shaping the ethical framework for artificial intelligence development. The encyclical calls for interreligious dialogue on these issues and warns against using God’s name to legitimize violence.

As the global AI race intensifies — with companies like Anthropic valued at approximately $380 billion following its Series G funding round in February 2026 — Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas represents the most significant attempt by a religious institution to influence the trajectory of technological development since the dawn of the digital age. Whether the tech industry heeds the call remains an open question, but the Pope’s message is clear: humanity faces a choice between building a new Tower of Babel or rebuilding the walls of a just and fraternal city.

“The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture,” the Pope concludes, “but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization.”