The magazine Time included Pope Leo XIV last year among the 100 most important personalities in the world in artificial intelligence (AI). It is no coincidence. Only eight days passed from his appointment until he spoke about that technology: “The truth does not distance us; on the contrary, it allows us to face the challenges of our time with greater vigor, such as migrations, the ethical use of AI, and the protection of our beloved earth,” he said in his second official speech. His first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (magnificent humanity), is precisely dedicated to this technology.
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AI is a concern in the Vatican. For the supreme pontiff, the matter is so important that it even determined the choice of his name. “Pope Leo XIII (…) faced the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. And today, the Church offers everyone the treasure of its social doctrine in response to another industrial revolution and the developments of artificial intelligence, which pose new challenges in defending human dignity, justice, and work,” asserted Leo XIV in his first intervention as pope before the College of Cardinals.
“AI must be disarmed,” the pope said sharply yesterday during the presentation of his encyclical. “It is a strong word, but I chose it consciously. The Church has long worked for nuclear disarmament. AI must be disarmed from the logics that transform it into domination, exclusion, and death,” he added. Before him, Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, the developer of Claude and Mythos, a generative AI program so sophisticated that it has triggered global alarm for its potential to jeopardize cybersecurity, took the floor. “We need moral voices that incentives cannot bend. We need more sectors of the world to do what His Holiness does: take this seriously.”
In the encyclical Rerum Novarum, from 1891, Leo XIII adapted the Church to the social reality brought by the turn of the century, demanding labor rights for the precarious industrial proletariat of the time, with 20-hour workdays from which neither children nor pregnant women escaped, and criticizing the excesses of monopolistic capitalism (43 years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto). The first American pope intends to do the same in the context of AI. Although he has presented his encyclical alongside a prominent member of the AI industry, which has been commented on (“it’s as if Leo XIII had presented Rerum Novarum alongside Henry Ford,” comments an analyst).
As evidenced by the unbridled promotion and implementation of technology at the expense of human dignity, we are truly experiencing an eclipse of the sense of what it means to be human. It is imperative to recover an understanding of the true meaning and grandeur of humanity as…
— Pope Leo XIV (@Pontifex) May 22, 2026
The encyclical published this Monday is not only justified as a way to address the social consequences of AI. The Church is not going through its best moment, and sees in this technology a possible source of problems for the institution. “It is no revelation that the Catholic Church is experiencing one of the deepest crises in its history, fundamentally due to the loss of credibility because of pedophilia, a phenomenon universally widespread in its structure,” opines theologian Juan José Tamayo, honorary emeritus professor at Carlos III University and author of Radical Christianity (Trotta publishing). “AI is a communication mechanism for spreading the Catholic message, of the Pope and the hierarchy in general, to harmonize it with the idea of the universal Church. That is why they need AI to transmit a message to all citizens that somehow neutralizes that crisis.”
Investments in AI
Time presents Pope Leo XIV as a “spiritual counterweight” to Silicon Valley’s leadership. But the speech of the supreme pontiff and that of his predecessor, Pope Francis, very critical both of AI and the industry developing it, contrasts with the Church’s investment policy.
The Vatican bank, the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), manages assets worth 5.9 billion euros, according to its own reports. The amount has almost tripled since 2020, when it totaled 2.2 billion. The institution dedicates 10% of its budget to charitable works that reinforce “humanitarian assistance that responds to the most urgent needs of the poor and marginalized.”
The rest of that money is invested. Where? The IOR does not make its positions public. What is known are the values that, in the Church’s opinion, are suitable for investment, that is, they are “aligned with Catholic values.” In February of this year, the IOR and the American financial services company Morningstar launched two stock indices, one European and one American, each including 50 medium and large-cap companies that “comply with Catholic teachings regarding life, social responsibility, and environmental protection.”
Among the main positions of those indices are companies such as Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, or Alphabet (Google’s parent company), as well as ASML, Intel, or Nvidia Corp, Apple, or Tesla. That is: AI developers, cloud infrastructure providers, manufacturers of the hardware necessary for this technology to work, and companies whose flagship products incorporate AI.
Companies related to sectors that the Vatican has recommended not investing in for years are not included in these indices: gambling and betting, abortion and pregnancy termination (such as condom manufacturers), fossil fuel industry and mining (due to pollution), or armaments. This last contrasts with the fact that many of the tech companies that do have the Church’s approval have signed contracts with the Pentagon or have provided direct support to the Palestinian genocide.
The Vatican-branded indices are a guide for managers and investment funds that, like iCapital, Altum Faithful, or Portocolom, specialize in attracting savings from religious congregations or organizations that observe Catholicism. They manage billions of euros in assets, so their moves are influential. And those indices prominently include many of the main AI developers.
The friar who put the Church in the conversation
On Saturday, September 13 last year, Karol G performed before a packed St. Peter’s Square on a night when Andrea Bocelli, John Legend, and Pharrell Williams also sang. The unusual festival, Grace for the World, was the culmination of a week of reflection sessions organized by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation, established by Pope Francis. During those days, about ten Nobel laureates passed through the Vatican to debate various topics.
There was a discussion panel specifically dedicated to AI. The question they had to answer was how human, animal, and machine intelligences can coexist. The level of participants was high: Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel Prize in Physics and creator of the Transformer algorithm that made generative AI possible; Yoshua Bengio, another AI godfather; or Stuart Russell, also well known in the discipline, as well as cosmologist Max Tegmark and historian Yuval Noah Harari, sat at the same table.
The organizer of that roundtable, capable of bringing together top academics, was a Franciscan monk, Paolo Benanti. This theologian was an AI advisor for Pope Francis, a role he has also performed for the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. Benanti’s writings reflect a human-centered vision of AI. He sees the development of a sapient AI positively, as long as it remains confined to a tool role.
“The very research question already implies a deterministic and doomertist view of AI [those who believe AI will bring the apocalypse],” he explains to EL PAÍS, one of the people who participated in those meetings. The debates were heated. Of the dozen experts convened, only two tried to get the discussion to focus on the current problems caused by AI, such as its high energy consumption, its effect on the environment, the biases many models incorporate, or its effect on mental health.
After the working group’s conclusion, Tegmark, Bengio, Hinton, and Russell promoted a new letter against the development of AGI (general AI, which theoretically will equal or surpass human capabilities). Among the signatories were Benanti and Steve Bannon, former communications advisor to Donald Trump.
“Benanti’s rhetoric is essentially similar to that of [OpenAI CEO Sam] Altman: AI is so efficient, powerful, and dangerous that AGI is imminent, so the important thing is that the right people develop it,” notes someone who participated in the Vatican discussions.
There is no scientific evidence to suggest that we are close to seeing AGI. However, the Church is making a move with its encyclical on AI. Both because of the social consequences of this technology, emphasized by Pope Francis and now by Leo XIV, and because of the elephant in the room that has settled in the Holy See: how can the development of machines that have answers, right or wrong, to all questions, even existential ones, affect the very existence of the institution?
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