A Pope for the AI Age

On May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV, the first head of the Catholic Church born in the US, released Magnifica Humanitas (MH), his first encyclical as pope and the first major Catholic magisterial teaching on AI. This is a landmark occasion for many reasons. The encyclical is part of Catholic Social Teaching, a set of teachings on social ethics rooted in Catholic belief. It is also one of the first attempts by the Catholic hierarchy to take seriously questions related to technology. At 42,000 words, this isn't light reading, but it is, in my view, a magnificent document. Some guidelines, and insights from the text below.

The Catholic Encyclical Tradition

Many people know that Catholics believe the Pope can be infallible, but they often don't know that this is in only very limited and specific moments. Catholic teaching from the Pope and other bishops constitutes what we can call "magisterial teaching." All Catholics, lay people and religious (i.e., priests, monks and nuns) alike, are expected to listen to magisterial teaching. But not all magisterial teaching has the same weight. If the Pope issues an "apostolic letter", it isn't as impactful as if he issues an "apostolic exhortio." Other documents coming from the Vatican also have different weight. Last year's Antiqua et Nova was, until now, the most comprehensive teaching about AI from the Holy See, and the Dicastery for the Defense of Faith, which published it, is tasked with making sure theological teaching is orthodox. As such, it's an important document, but not as impactful as a teaching from the Pope. Encyclicals (pronounced en-SI-cli-cal) are the highest level of teaching a Pope can give short of a proclamation "ex cathedra," which will be infallible by definition. The only other documents which can be more authoritative are conciliar constitutions (for example, Gaudium et Spes). This is why MH is such a big deal.

What I find remarkable about MH in terms of the Catholic Social Teaching (CST) tradition is two things, both related to chapters one and two of the encyclical. First, the Pope gives a summary and overview of CST, from the origins of the social encyclical tradition with his namesake Leo XIII up to Pope Francis. This is the sort of basic summary you might get in an introductory course on CST and is a bit bizarre to include. However, it tells me that Pope Leo XIV is interested in making sure anyone who reads this document can contextualize it within broader CST. You don't have to have a PhD in the subject (like me) to understand what the Pope is talking about here, and how his view builds on older view.

The second remarkable thing is much more subtle. The Pope chooses certain documents and not others. He summarizes them in a certain way while not talking about every single detail. In this way, he gives you an official way of understanding CST, a way which is not necessarily the way all Catholics have understood these documents. Is the Pope changing Church teaching? I think the answer may be yes. Later in the document, in paragraph 176 while talking about how Church teaching on slavery has changed, the Pope writes, "In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues." To openly note that doctrine has "developed" is a way of indicating that it can and will continue to develop, and not just by adding teachings on (like adding discussion of AI or climate change), but also by changing existing teaching.

Re-situating the Church

Brian Green, Director of Technology Ethics at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center, often likes to point out that the Catholic Church remains one of the few authoritative voices of morality in our world. But we also know that that voice of authority has lost much of its strength since 2002 in the wake of the sex abuse crisis. It is remarkable that the Pope addresses just this problem in the encyclical, making it an open apology to the victims of clergy abuse. In paragraph 89, the Pope writes, "Living out justice in the Church means purifying ecclesial relationships and structures from distortions that give rise to inequality, lack of transparency and abuse of power. In this regard, listening to the victims of spiritual, economic, institutional, sexual and power-based abuse, as well as abuses of conscience, is an integral part of a journey toward justice, which includes acknowledging the harm done, just reparation and taking steps to prevent it from happening again." This is an unprecedented acknowledgment of ecclesial failures and a strong call for the hierarchy to do better.

The Pope further situates the Church as a voice of truth, but not the voice of truth. In paragraph 25, he writes, "The Church does not claim to possess a monopoly on truth because truth is not a territory to be defended, but a good to be shared." Much later in the document (223), the Pope goes further: "In rejecting the mindset of violence, interreligious dialogue plays a decisive role, because at the heart of the great spiritual paths lies a message of peace." In fact, the way the document is structured, it invites all people of good will to enter into dialogue and emphasizes the Church's need to listen authentically to voices of others, especially, the Pope repeats through the text, "the most vulnerable."

At the same time, though, the Pope does emphasize the Church's task to be an authentic voice against abuse and harm. This encyclical takes on a "prophetic" function by calling out injustice, harms against the poor and vulnerable, destructive mindsets, and zero-sum competitions between states and economic actors. Echoing Pope Francis, Pope Leo attacks the "technocratic paradigm," a broad ideology that assumes all problems can be solved through technological means instead of thinking about real human needs. This echoes a lot of the best scholarship on AI ethics at present, including, for example, the Stochastic Parrots paper's cautions against hegemonic voices in LLMs, Cathy O'Neil's warnings against the limits of mathematical modeling, Herbert Marcuse's cautions against one-dimensional society, Donna Haraway's situated knowledges, Lee Vinsel's cautions against "criti-hype," Mark Coeckelbergh's warnings against AI's harm on democracy, and my collaborators' own criticism against the Western coloniality of AI discourse.

A final thing to note about this--if the Pope is really indicating a sea change in CST, which I think he is, then he has to be very careful about doing so. More conservative-minded Catholics tend to not like such shifts in thinking. Even if the Pope says something uncontroversial in Catholic teaching, but inflammatory to people with evil intent, he riles up a lot of people, as indicated earlier this year when he made the un-controversial charge that the US was unjustified in attacking Iran. So another difference between this encyclical and many others is that the vast majority of references inside are to other magisterial documents. In other words, the Pope is saying, "I'm not saying anything different, [wink]." But the Pope does cite Victor Frankl, Hannah Arendt and JRR Tolkien, and makes reference to many signifinicant historical figures, many of whom are not Catholic.

The Bite of the Encylical: Chapter 3

When I started reading the encyclical, I thought I may skip over chapter 3 because it looks, from the table of contents, to say nothing specifically unique. But when I read it--oooooh boy!

This chapter expands the "technocratic paradigm" critique of Pope Francis, but it's incredibly more nuanced and subtle. The Pope reconizes, for example, that technologies are not neutral, which is not to say any given technology is inherently evil or good. The Pope puts moral responsibility of AI systems in the hands of the developers, noting that technological affordances appear to users in ways that they are not always aware of. Mark Graham lamented that Catholic ethics of technology usually amounted to an "ethics of use," a focus on how people used tools rather than how the tools affect us. In paragraph 104, the Pope finally gives ethicists of technology a position to challenge design philosophy: "For this reason, ethical discernment cannot be limited to asking whether we are using a system for good or bad purposes; it must also examine how that system is designed and what vision of the human person and society is embedded in the data and models that guide it."

More significantly, the Pope also challenges the "alignment" discourse around AI as being a product of hegemonic imposition. In a similar vein to my own arguments about the values in-built to AI, the Pope writes, "We cannot be satisfied with merely calling for the moralization of machines — the so-called “alignment” of AI with human values — without also having the courage to insist on a further condition: the possibility of openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice." AI as currently designed is intended toward capitalistic aims and goals. It doesn't serve the "most vulnerable" in a way that is authentic to their needs. The Pope challenges this view from the very top--the design choices of those making the models. This is surprisingly very much in line with the view of Andrew Feenberg and his Critical Theory of Technology.

In this section, the Pope also attacks transhumanism as an ideology as well. This isn't that surprising to me, and it also supports the intuition I and other Catholic theologians have held on this subject. Catholicism as a whole emphasizes the "fleshliness" of humanity more than Protestantism tends to. Catholic sacraments, for example, usually include some corporeal element, such as consuming the literal body and blood of Christ in Eucharist or being anointed with chrism in confirmation. Transhumanism, which is very much supportive of the narrative of AI as sentient and dignified, tends to emphasize a more Enlightenment-based dualism between the immaterial human mind and the limited human body. Thus, in one stroke, the Pope both condemns the anti-human rhetoric within transhumanism and the anthropomorphising fantasy of many AI evangelists.

Some major concerns: chapters 4 and 5

In chapters 4 and 5, the Pope addresses a number of specific social concerns of AI. I don't think this is intended to be an exhaustive list, and I may have chosen other issues, but it is important and reflects good scholarship going on around AI ethics.

Chapter 4 addresses the majority of topics, including education, truth, political stability, work, family life and environmental harm. On the whole the Pope takes authentic CST teachings on each of these issues and highlights ways AI is and may exacerbate harms, and suggestions for an "integral development". There are recommendations in this section for policy makers, educators, employers, parents, Church leaders and more.

Chapter 5 focuses specifically on war and peace. Obviously, the problem of automated weapons systems is at the forefront of this discussion. Surprisingly, though, the Pope makes the bold claim in paragraph 192 that "it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated." The Pope emphasizes pacifism and dialogue as far more important than self-defense or pre-emptive attacks. Building peace needs to be the business of all world leaders, rather than stoking global conflicts.

In this way, the Pope emphasizes the challenge to pursue a "Civilization of Love" rather than the "Culture of Power." This duality serves as a leitmotif for the encyclical. The Pope continually contrasts the arrogance and power-hunger of the Tower of Babel with the community and humility of Nehemiah's rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. AI in its present "technocratic paradigm" course is contrasted with AI for integral development. AI as an idol is contrasted with the irreducible dignity of humanity. Thus the infographs published by the Dicastery for Integral Human Development all show this dualism.

Conclusion

The encyclical's title refers to the irreducible dignity of the human. This is an unsurprising emphasis in CST, but the Pope's position makes it clear that we cannot and should not put AI on the same level as us. As I argue at the end of Poor Technology, AI sits as an idol for the powerful, a mirror reflecting what they want to see in themselves. More challenging for us is seeing the face of God in the poor and miserable around us, those whose immeasurable dignity stands as a witness against the callousness of our world to human suffering.

My own thinking comes from my faith, but philosophically, I find it resonant in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas is never mentioned in the encylical, but his major philosophical contribution, the image of the "face" of the other is prominent. I find myself wondering if this means Catholicism is taking a more Levinasian tack in CST? Shall we see an emphasis on the radical alterity and infinite responsibility? Only time will tell, but I do think Levinas's views are not incompatible with orthodox Christian thought.

In this view, allow me to conclude with a final quote from the Encyclical, one which ties together what I think the Pope says most prophetically and profoundly. This comes from paragraph 233, nearly the end of the document.

"The dignity inscribed in each of us by the Holy Spirit can also be seen in our capacity to reflect critically, choose and love freely, and form authentic relationships. No computational system, however sophisticated, can create a heart that gives itself, or a conscience that discerns good from evil. Even when machines excel in efficiency, a human face that asks to be gazed upon remains the center of our history. This human face is the fullness toward which history is moving."