Explainer: Why the Pope has declared war on AI

IT’S Monday morning, May 25, 2026. Inside Vatican City’s Synod Hall, Pope Leo XIV walks up and drops what is essentially the most unexpected collab of the year — a sweeping artificial intelligence manifesto, presented alongside Chris Olah, the billionaire co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind Claude, one of the world’s most talked-about AI chatbots right now. Yes, this bizarre crossover genuinely happened.Pope Leo XIV issued the first major theological text of his papacy, a 42,300-word encyclical titled ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ (Latin for magnificent humanity), warning about the growing power of artificial intelligence and calling for stronger regulation of the technology. And the Pope did not come to play. His choice of words? Deliberately dramatic. He literally said AI needed to be “disarmed”.So, what even is an encyclical?Think of it as the Pope’s official group email, except instead of 12 persons in a team thread, the recipients are technically every Catholic bishop on the planet, and the world reads it too. The encyclical most clearly parallels Pope Leo XIII’s ‘Rerum Novarum’ from 1891, a landmark text written during the Industrial Revolution that addressed workers’ rights, economic inequality and rapid industrialisation. History really does rhyme, doesn’t it?What does ‘disarm AI’ mean?The document frames AI as the new industrial revolution and makes an appeal to “disarm AI” by removing it from military and economic interests, subjecting AI companies to stricter state and international regulations and inviting the broad participation of individuals and communities in shaping the future of the technology.Simply put, the Pope is saying AI shouldn’t be a weapon, literally or metaphorically. He condemned AI in warfare, saying that no algorithm can make war morally acceptable. He also called out how AI-manipulated images and deepfakes are messing with democracy and pushing people toward biased perspectives. Not exactly a vibe.The slavery comparisonOne of the most striking parts of ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ is where Pope Leo draws a line between historical slavery and what he calls “new digital slaveries”. He warned that the world risks normalising the exploitation of people all over again, both in how AI systems are built (often on the labour of underpaid workers in developing nations) and in how they are used.He also issued one of the most comprehensive Vatican apologies for the Church’s role in the slave trade. Heavy stuff, but clearly intentional.Why was Anthropic’s co-founder there?Chris Olah was invited to speak at the presentation of the encyclical in the Vatican City as part of Anthropic’s initiative to widen the conversation on the important questions raised by AI. Olah admitted that every frontier AI lab, including Anthropic, operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.Basically, even the “safety-first” AI company acknowledged that the system is kind of broken. He also dropped a line that should make every tech bro uncomfortable: AI decisions should not be left to people in the industry. Coming from someone in the industry, that’s a mic-drop moment. Olah also warned that mass job losses from AI are “a real possibility” and that supporting displaced workers will be “a moral imperative of historic proportions”. No sugarcoating there.What does this all mean for us?The Vatican decided to involve Anthropic as part of its decade-long effort to engage Silicon Valley in dialogue over the human cost of AI. This isn’t just religious symbolism, it is a signal that the AI conversation can no longer stay locked inside tech campuses and government committees. When the Pope and a top AI lab are literally in the same room, agreeing that the industry needs outside checks, something has shifted.The encyclical urges governments, corporations and individuals to slow the rate of technological development and ensure that AI remains subject to ethical and political oversight.Is Pope Leo going to regulate Silicon Valley? No. But could this moment shift the moral weight of the conversation globally? Absolutely. And sometimes, that’s where real change begins.

Explainer: Why the Pope has declared war on AI

Influential religious leader drops a 42,000-word document on tech ethics & it’s time to pay heed

Gagandeep Arora

Explainer: Why the Pope has declared war on AI

Influential religious leader drops a 42,000-word document on tech ethics & it’s time to pay heed

Gagandeep Arora

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