What the Pope Said About AI — And Why Every Catholic Should Read It

Why This Document Matters

On May 15, 2026 — the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, the encyclical that gave birth to Catholic Social Doctrine — Pope Leo XIV released Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. Sixty pages. Two hundred forty-five paragraphs. A document that takes artificial intelligence more seriously than any official Church teaching has ever done before.

I am a Catholic seminarian who builds AI tools for Catholic ministry. I say that not to make myself interesting, but because it gives me a specific reason to read this document slowly and honestly. I have read it. All of it. And I want to help you understand it — not as a summary that flattens its depth, but as a faithful account that preserves its urgency.

This document is not anti-technology. It is not a blanket condemnation of artificial intelligence. But it is a serious, spiritually demanding, morally precise call to every Catholic — and to every human person — to ask the question that Leo XIV plants at the very center of the encyclical:

Does AI “make human life on earth ‘more human’ in every aspect of that life? Does it make it more worthy of man?”

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 129, p. 29 (citing John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, par. 15)

That is the measure. Not efficiency. Not productivity. Not profit. Not power. Is human life more human? That question is this document in a sentence.

The Pope's Central Image: Babel or Jerusalem

Pope Leo XIV opens with two images from the Hebrew Scriptures that he returns to again and again: the Tower of Babel and the rebuilt walls of Jerusalem under Nehemiah.

The Tower of Babel was built on pride and self-sufficiency. Technically impressive, collectively organized, aimed at reaching heaven — but it excluded God from the work. Its result was not unity, but dispersion. People stopped understanding one another.

Nehemiah's Jerusalem was the opposite. The city was in ruins. The walls had collapsed. The gates were burned. A people had returned from exile to nothing. Nehemiah prayed, discerned, organized, listened to the concerns of families, and assigned each community their section to rebuild. Men, women, priests, artisans — everyone played a part. What was rebuilt was not just stones: it was relationship, covenant, and common language — not the language of uniformity, but the language of communion.

In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. Therefore, the primary choice is not between a “yes” or “no” to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 9, p. 5

The question the Pope is asking is not should we have AI? It is: what kind of builders are we? Are we building Babel — power for its own sake, efficiency at the expense of dignity, a digital world where only the strong speak and the vulnerable are reduced to data? Or are we rebuilding Jerusalem — technology that listens, that includes, that measures its success by whether the most vulnerable are protected and the common good is served?

Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or [to build] the city in which God and humanity dwell together.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 1, p. 3

From Leo XIII to Leo XIV: 135 Years of Social Doctrine

Chapter One of the encyclical maps how the Church has engaged the social questions of each era. Leo XIV is not starting from scratch. He is stepping into a tradition 135 years old, and he wants us to understand what we are inheriting.

In 1891, Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum — "new things" — in response to the first industrial revolution. The tradition that grew from that encyclical includes Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno (subsidiarity), John XXIII's Pacem in Terris (human rights), Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes, Paul VI's Populorum Progressio, John Paul II's trilogy on labor and solidarity, Benedict XVI's Caritas in Veritate, and Francis's Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti.

I therefore wish to add my own voice to this living tradition, invoking the help of the Spirit of wisdom, who has dwelt in the world since its beginning.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 3, p. 4

What makes this encyclical historically significant is that it is the first to address artificial intelligence not as a footnote, but as the central social challenge of our era — the res novae, the "new things," of our time. Just as Leo XIII could not simply repeat ancient wisdom about almsgiving to address the industrial age, Leo XIV argues that we cannot simply repeat old formulas to address the digital revolution. The categories must develop. The tradition must grow. But it grows from roots, not from air.

The Foundations: Human Dignity and the Common Good

Chapter Two lays the principles that guide everything that follows. If you skip this chapter, the later chapters on AI will feel like opinions. With this chapter, they become a coherent moral vision.

The foundation is the human person: created in the image of the Triune God, endowed with intrinsic dignity that cannot be earned, bought, optimized, or taken away. Every person — the migrant, the elderly, the child laborer, the content moderator reviewing disturbing images for minimal wages — is infinitely loved by God and infinitely worthy of protection.

From that foundation, the document draws the grammar of Catholic Social Doctrine:

• The common good: conditions that allow individuals and communities to flourish together.
• Universal destination of goods: the earth and its resources belong, in principle, to all humanity — not only to those with capital, data, or computing power.
• Subsidiarity: decisions should be made at the lowest level capable of making them well.
• Solidarity: we are responsible for one another, especially the most vulnerable.
• Social justice: structures must be ordered so that everyone — particularly the weakest — can live a truly dignified life.

In the digital age, a just social order guarantees everyone equal access to opportunities, protects the youngest and weakest members of society, combats hate and misinformation, and subjects the use of data and technology to public oversight, so that the guiding principle is not solely profit but the dignity of every person and the common good of all people.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 80, p. 20

What AI Is — And What It Can Never Be

In Chapter Three, Pope Leo XIV does something unusual for a papal document: he thinks carefully about what artificial intelligence actually is. He acknowledges the genuine good that AI can do. But he also makes a philosophical claim that is one of the most important in the entire encyclical.

He notes that current AI systems are not simply programmed, but are in some sense "cultivated." Developers create frameworks within which the intelligence "grows." This makes AI's internal processes partially opaque even to its designers. That fact alone demands humility.

But the deeper point comes in paragraph 99. Worth quoting in full:

[AI systems] 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. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good from evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behaviors, analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 99, pp. 23–24

The Pope is not saying AI is useless. He is saying AI is different from us in kind, not just in degree. It can process. It can produce outputs that look like language, emotion, even wisdom. But it cannot know from within. It has never been loved or abandoned. It has never prayed. It has never been responsible for a child, a parish, a death. A system that simulates empathy is not empathetic. A system that produces religious text is not faithful.

We cannot consider AI to be morally neutral. In reality, every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 104, p. 25

And yet, the Pope does not end here with mere critique. He sees something genuinely hopeful in the human capacity to create:

Technological innovation can represent human participation in the divine act of creation. Developers, therefore, bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility, for every design choice reflects a vision of humanity.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 111, p. 26

Who Controls the Future? Governance, Accountability, and Power

One of the most politically direct sections of the encyclical concerns the concentration of power in the digital world. Leo XIV names what he sees: a small number of private actors — not states, not communities, not the poor — control the infrastructure, the data, the algorithms, and therefore the conditions of visibility, access, and participation for most of humanity.

When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 95, p. 23

Here is where the Pope says something I find genuinely courageous:

A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few. What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating, and of protecting the opportunities for communities still to be able to participate and ask questions.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 107, p. 25

The Pope is not just asking for better AI ethics. He is asking who sets the ethical frameworks. If a small number of technology companies define what counts as "aligned," "safe," or "ethical" AI — without democratic participation, without the input of the Global South, without the presence of the poor — then that is not ethics. That is power wearing the language of ethics.

Disarming AI

One of the most distinctive phrases in the entire encyclical is the call to "disarm AI." Leo XIV uses it more broadly than a purely military metaphor:

Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of “armed” competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and commercial phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 110, p. 26

"Disarming" AI means returning it to the human family as a whole. It means insisting that AI be governed not only by those who built or funded it, but by processes that include everyone who will be affected by it — especially the most vulnerable, who have the most to lose and the least power to resist.

The People Behind the Machine

This section is, for me, among the most morally urgent. The Pope refuses to let us celebrate the benefits of AI without reckoning with the human cost of its construction.

Nothing in the world of AI is immaterial or magical. Every seemingly immediate and flawless response is the result of a long chain of mediation, involving vast networks of natural resources, energy infrastructure and, above all, people. A significant part of the digital economy’s functioning relies on the silent work of millions of people engaged in essential yet largely unseen activities such as data labeling, model training and content moderation, often involving disturbing material. In many cases, these workers are young people, predominantly women, working under demanding conditions for minimal wages.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 173, p. 38

And then there are the children. Leo XIV does not let this pass in silence:

Added to this invisible labor is the even harsher work of extracting the resources required for the production of the devices and microprocessors on which AI depends. In some regions of the world, children and adolescents work in dangerous conditions, crushing the materials from which rare earth elements are extracted. The bodies of these people are scarred, injured and worn down so that computational systems continue uninterruptedly.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 173, pp. 38–39

To speak of AI solidarity, the encyclical says, is not an abstraction:

To speak of solidarity obliges us to recognize the hidden, often exploited workers, who sustain algorithmic systems. To speak of justice requires questioning the global distribution of power that determines who in fact can train these models and who is merely subjected to them.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 109, pp. 25–26

Truth, Work, and Freedom in the Digital Age

Truth as a common good

The Pope argues that truth is not the property of those who have the loudest platform or the deepest pockets. Truth is a common good. AI amplifies disinformation at a speed and scale no previous technology could match. He calls for "an ecology of communication": transparent content selection, serious journalism, digital literacy, and — with unusual candor — calls the Church itself to accountability in its own communication.

The dignity of work

The Pope is not a Luddite. He does not oppose automation. But he insists that the costs of technological transition cannot fall entirely on the most vulnerable workers:

The protection of employment opportunities and the irreplaceable role of the individual must be the general rule. The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human being is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 152, pp. 33–34

Freedom against dependencies and commercialization

The Pope names digital addiction not as a personal failing but as a structural design choice: platforms are built to capture attention, exploit psychological vulnerabilities, and weaken inner freedom. He calls for particular protection for children and young people, whose developing minds are most susceptible to these architectures of capture. He also names "new forms of colonialism" in the digital age: the extraction of health data and genetic information from vulnerable populations, which becomes the property of those who control the infrastructure of analysis. Data, in this vision, is a common good, not a private resource.

AI and the Normalization of War

Chapter Five deals with the "culture of power" — a cultural shift in which war is being normalized, armed conflict is being technologically lowered in threshold, and the protections of international law are being eroded. AI is accelerating this shift. The Pope says something here that I believe will be quoted for decades:

Sometimes there is talk of “artificial moral agents,” as if machines were able to distinguish between right and wrong with greater consistency than a human being. Yet moral judgment cannot be reduced to calculation, for it involves conscience, responsibility and the recognition of the other as a person. Therefore, it is not permissible to entrust lethal or otherwise irreversible decisions to artificial systems. No algorithm can make war morally acceptable.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 198, p. 42

"It is not permissible." This is the language of moral prohibition. Not a recommendation. Not a suggestion. A categorical judgment, rooted in the irreducibility of moral conscience to calculation. No matter how sophisticated the algorithm, no machine can bear moral responsibility for the death of another person. Responsibility requires conscience, and conscience requires a subject who can be held accountable before God and before humanity.

The Civilization of Love: What the Pope Invites Us to Build

Against the "culture of power," Leo XIV sets the "civilization of love" — a phrase first used by Paul VI in 1970, which Leo XIV now reclaims and extends to the digital age. The civilization of love is not naïve optimism. But Leo XIV insists that every person has a responsibility — however large or small their sphere of action. He names five paths of daily responsibility: disarming words, building peace through justice, adopting the perspective of victims, cultivating healthy realism, and reviving dialogue.

— Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 15, p. 6

Leo XIV also offers a different account of what "more than human" means, over against transhumanist promises:

When we embrace the possibility of transcending ourselves through God’s grace, we do not deny our nature, nor do we become less human. On the contrary, as Pope Francis explained, “We become fully human when we become more than human, when we let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being.”

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 128, p. 29 (citing Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, par. 8)

What saves humanity is not enhanced self-sufficiency. It is relationship. It is love. It is the God who enters our weakness rather than eliminating it, and who transforms it into something that no algorithm can produce or predict.

The Magnificat: A Song of Hope for Our Time

The Pope closes the encyclical not with a policy proposal, but with a prayer. He turns to Mary and the Magnificat — that ancient, revolutionary hymn sung by a young woman from an occupied, marginalized people who had just been told that God was doing something impossible in her womb.

The Magnificat is a song about power. Not the power of algorithms or armies or capital, but the power of God who "scatters the proud, casts down the mighty, lifts up the lowly, fills the hungry with good things." Mary's song is the most radical social doctrine in the Christian Scriptures. And Leo XIV deliberately ends his encyclical on AI with her voice — because even the era of artificial intelligence is not beyond the scope of this promise.

With the same faith as Mary, let us become “weavers of hope” in our world, sharing who we are and what we have, so that the presence of Jesus may grow among us and his Kingdom take shape. In the humble fidelity of daily life, even the era of AI can become a time in which the Holy Spirit brings about the civilization of love in our lives.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 245, pp. 50–51

"Weavers of hope." Not algorithm designers alone. Not policy architects alone. People who, in their daily choices, their words, their relationships, their work, their prayer, take the frayed threads of a digitally accelerating world and weave them toward something more human, more just, more like the Kingdom.

A Personal Word from the Author

I read this document three times. The first time quickly, to get the shape of it. The second time slowly, with a pen. The third time I just sat with it.

What struck me most was the tenderness of it. This is not a document written by someone who fears technology. It is written by someone who loves humanity — who has looked at the digital world and felt the urgency of naming what is truly at stake: not innovation, not policy, not market share, but the human person. The irreplaceable, unrepeatable, God-bearing human person.

I am a seminarian. I will one day stand at an ambo and preach to people whose names I will carry in my heart. And I think about what it means that the Church, in the year 2026, felt it necessary to issue a document this serious about something that did not exist in any recognizable form a decade ago. It means something is happening. It means the stakes are real.

I also want to say this plainly: I have a lot of respect for what the Pope pulled off here. We live in an era where barely a week goes by without some politician standing in front of a microphone saying something about AI that makes it obvious they have never used it, never thought seriously about it, and are mostly just afraid of it or trying to score points off it. The statements are embarrassing. The confusion is real. And yet here is a 60-page papal document that gets into the actual philosophy of the thing — the epistemology, the ontology, the question of what it means to know and to be known, to labor and to create. The Pope is not talking around AI. He is talking about it, in a way that shows someone genuinely grappled with what it is at its core, not just what it can do. That is rare. That deserves to be said.

The Pope does not ask us to be afraid. He asks us to be responsible. To ask the harder questions — not just can we? but should we? and for whom? and at what cost to the most vulnerable? That is not technophobia. That is the oldest moral tradition on earth: love your neighbor as yourself.

Read this encyclical. Share it. Study it. Bring it to your parish study group, your seminary classroom, your technology ethics discussion. Let the Pope's question haunt your work:

Does AI “make human life on earth ‘more human’ in every aspect of that life? Does it make it more worthy of man?”

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, par. 129, p. 29

If yes: embrace it, with responsibility, transparency, and care for the most vulnerable.
If no: have the courage to say so.

The walls of Jerusalem are waiting to be rebuilt. Each one of us has a section.

— Seminarian Giuseppe Njualem
Diocese of Saint Thomas, US Virgin Islands
May 30, 2026

Research note: Most of the paragraph citations and sourced quotes in this article were located with the assistance of Claude AI (Anthropic). The “Key Quotes” list in the sidebar was compiled with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI) after the main write-up was complete. All quotes were verified against the original text of the encyclical.