Pope Leo XIV released his inaugural encyclical on Monday, titled "Magnifica Humanitas," focused on protecting human dignity amid artificial intelligence. However, the 200-page document ventures far beyond technology concerns, addressing deeper systemic issues like inequality, armed conflict, democratic decline, and the dangerous accumulation of power among elites. The pope presented the encyclical alongside Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, reinforcing his core argument that technology designed and controlled by a narrow group cannot genuinely serve the broader public interest. "When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight," the document states, warning this creates "new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities."
The encyclical contends that AI amplifies the advantages already held by those with financial resources, technical expertise, and data access. These powerful actors can mold information consumption, sway democratic elections, and direct economic outcomes in their favor. The timing is notable, coming just days after President Donald Trump postponed signing an executive order that would have granted the government authority to review new AI models before public release—a delay reportedly influenced by venture capitalist and former White House AI czar David Sacks. Leo XIV is demanding that AI development operate under "clear criteria and effective oversight" with meaningful input from affected communities.
The pope also pushes back against the global race for AI supremacy, arguing against the pursuit of "ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets" that nations and corporations view as essential for geopolitical and commercial dominance. He writes that "disarm" means rejecting the notion that "technical power automatically confers the right to govern." These tensions are not new. The document echoes Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical "Rerum Novarum," which tackled similar power concentrations during the Industrial Revolution. More recently, Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and subsequent use of the platform to boost Trump's campaign, combined with hundreds of millions in tech elite funding toward blocking AI regulation, clearly shaped the pope's thinking on these patterns of technological control.