Pope Leo XIV on Monday released his first encyclical, calling for strong legal regulation of artificial intelligence and declaring that AI developers must work for the common good rather than profit. The document, titled Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity, takes direct aim at the concentration of power in private hands and the use of AI in warfare.
According to ABC News, the encyclical was announced days after Leo's election, when he identified AI as the biggest challenge facing humanity today. The document had been widely anticipated in technology, academic, and religious circles.
In the text, Leo denounced what he called the "culture of power" driving the global AI race. He focused particular attention on increasingly sophisticated methods of remote warfare, declaring that it was "not permissible" to entrust irreversible, lethal decisions to AI systems. That position places the American-born pope in direct conflict with the Trump administration, which has worked to deregulate AI development.
"Artificial Intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death," the pope told a special Vatican presentation of the encyclical, one of the most authoritative types of teaching documents in the Catholic Church.
Leo also targeted the concentration of data and decision-making power in the hands of a small number of private sector figures, calling it a particular danger to children and vulnerable populations. He called for external oversight rather than self-regulation by the industry. "It is not enough to invoke ethics in the abstract; robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required," he wrote. "A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few."
Experts in technology, academia, and Catholic ethics said the document will likely become a benchmark in global AI policy debates. Taylor Black, a Microsoft AI executive and director of Catholic University of America's AI institute, said the encyclical addresses deep questions about identity. "It lends itself to people who are at the forefront of these tools and able to see the incredible things that they're able to do, to have questions about their own 'What does it mean to be human?'" Black said.
The Vatican presentation also included remarks from the co-founder of Anthropic, an AI company currently involved in a legal dispute with the Trump administration over access to its technology. The Vatican chose to involve Anthropic as part of a decade-long effort to bring Silicon Valley into dialogue about the human consequences of AI development.
