Pope Leo XIV will publish his inaugural encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, on May 25, addressing the ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence, labour rights, and global peace in what the Vatican described as the highest form of papal teaching outlining the pontiff’s priorities on serious social and moral issues for the modern world.
The Vatican announced that Leo, the first American pope, would personally present the document in a departure from papal tradition, joined by Chris Olah, co-founder of the AI company Anthropic. The choice of co-presenter was seen as reflecting the pontiff’s engagement with the AI industry’s own debates about the responsible development and deployment of the technology.
The encyclical, signed on May 15, the 135th anniversary of a landmark encyclical by Pope Leo XIII calling for better conditions for labourers, is expected to decry the use of AI in warfare and address the technology’s implications for workers’ rights. Leo had previously warned about AI’s risks on multiple occasions, describing its use in military conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran as reflecting the inhumane evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies.
The document may also offer the Church’s fullest guidance on workers’ rights in decades and builds on Leo’s earlier apostolic exhortation calling for widespread changes to the global market system to address rising wealth inequality.
