The Vatican is preparing to release Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical in the coming weeks.
Pope Leo XIV arrives for his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 13, 2026. Vatican officials said Leo signed the document Friday, 135 years to the day after his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, signed his most important encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” or Of New Things.
That document addressed the rights of workers, the limits of capitalism and the obligations that states and employers owed workers as the Industrial Revolution was under way. It became the foundation of modern Catholic social thought, and the current pope has already cited it in relation to the, which he believes poses the same existential questions that the Industrial Revolution posed over a century ago.
The new encyclical is expected to place the AI question in the context of the church's social teaching, which also covers issues such as labor, justice and peace.
“I think that the Catholic Church in many ways is going to be the adult in the room on some of these debates about how we are going to integrate AI into the rest of our society,” said Meghan Sullivan, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame who directs its ethics institute. “For sure, the pope is going to be one of the most forceful advocates for human dignity in these discussions.
”owed it to the world to offer the “treasury of her social teaching” to confront the challenges posed by AI on “human dignity, justice and labor. ” The American pope, a math major who is known to spend time scrolling on his phone, will likely refer to the issue this weekend, since the Vatican on Sunday marks its social communications day with a message dedicated to the.
In the message, released earlier this year, Leo warned of the need to preserve real human relationships in the face of chatbot “friends,” human genius in the face of AI-powered music and video, and human reality in the face of generative The public release of the encyclical, expected in coming weeks, will likely become a new flashpoint between the Chicago-born Leo and the Trump administration, which has made the rapid development of AI a matter ofthat included AI business.
Traveling with Trump on Air Force One were, among others, Elon Musk, whose social media platform X features his AI chatbot Grok, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who recently secured federal approval to sellSince the AI boom kicked off with ChatGPT’s debut, the technology’s breathtaking capabilities have amazed the world. Tech companies have raced to develop better AI systems even as experts, from existential but far-off threats like rogue AIs running out of control to everyday problems like bias in algorithmic hiring systems.last year adopted a new governance architecture to rein in AI after previous multilateral efforts, including AI summits organized byfor the application of AI in sectors from warfare to education and healthcare.
The underlying call has been that the technology must be used as a tool to complement, and not replace, human intelligence. The Vatican has also warned of the environmental impact of the AI race, recalling the “vast amounts of energy and water” needed for AI data centers and computational power.
“There are almost a billion and a half Catholics in the world, so that alone is reason to pay attention,” said Thomas Harmon, theology professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. “But beyond the numbers, the Catholic Church has a deep and sophisticated tradition of thinking through what it means to be human.
” The Vatican in 2020 enlisted tech companies to sign onto an AI pledge, known as the Rome Call for AI Ethics, which among other things boiled down some core principles for AI regulation, including inclusiveness, accountability, impartiality and privacy. Microsoft, IBM and Cisco were among the private sector companies that signed on.
, saying the risks of technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness were too great to merely trust in the morality of AI researchers and developers. He also brought his authority to bear on the Group of Seven, addressing a special session on the perils and promises of AI in 2024. There, Francis said politicians must take the lead in making sure AI remains human-centric, so that decisions aboutor even less-lethal tools always remain made by humans.
He called ultimately for a ban on the use of lethal autonomous weapons, colloquially known as “killer robots. ”In-house, Leo has warned priests against using AI to write their homilies, but he has also raised his voice on the broader implications of AI on world peace, labor and the very meaning of reality.
For the Augustinian pope, generative AI’s ability to misinform and deceive through deepfake imagery is particularly worrisome, given that the search for truth is a fundamental element of his religious order's spirituality. In a June 2025 speech to an AI conference, Leo acknowledged generative AI’s contributions to healthcare and scientific discovery. But he questioned “its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, on our distinctive ability to grasp reality.
” Leo, who has emphasized a constant appeal for peace, has also called for monitoring how AI is being used and developed in warfare in the Middle East and Ukraine, where automated weapons systems are using everything from “What is happening in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon and in Iran illustrates the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation,” he said this past week at La Sapienza, Europe’s largest university. Copyright 2026 The Associated Press.
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