The Pope drops an encyclical on AI tomorrow and invited Anthropic's co-founder to present it
Tomorrow at 11:30 AM Vatican time, Pope Leo XIV will publish Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), the first papal encyclical ever written about artificial intelligence. The document focuses on “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.”
The symbolism is deliberate. Leo signed the encyclical on May 15, exactly 135 years after Pope Leo XIII signed Rerum Novarum, the 1891 encyclical that addressed workers’ rights during the Industrial Revolution. The current pope has explicitly framed AI as posing the same scale of existential questions that industrialization did over a century ago.
The presentation itself breaks with Vatican tradition in ways that matter. Encyclicals normally get released through the Vatican press office with a handful of cardinals. This one gets a full-scale event at the Synod Hall. Two top cardinals will present: doctrine chief Victor Manuel Fernandez and development chief Michael Czerny. But the lay speakers are where it gets interesting.
Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic and head of its interpretability research team, will speak at the Vatican event. This is the same Anthropic that is currently suing the US Department of Defense over a supply chain risk designation and is about to close a $30 billion funding round at a $900 billion valuation. Having the co-founder of one of the world’s most powerful AI companies on stage at the Vatican is not a normal Tuesday.
Theologians Anna Rowlands from Durham University and Leocadie Lushombo will also present. Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin will conclude. Pope Leo himself will deliver a speech and final blessing, another departure from standard practice.
What the encyclical will likely cover, based on multiple previews and the pope’s public statements since his election last year:
- A call for ethics-based AI development centered on human dignity
- Concerns about AI in warfare, specifically lethal autonomous weapons
- Workers’ rights in the context of AI-driven automation and job displacement
- The need for regulation, putting the Church at odds with the Trump administration’s push to remove barriers to AI development
The Vatican also announced that Leo has created an internal AI study group, citing the acceleration of AI use and “its potential effects on human beings and on humanity as a whole.” The Church has been in regular dialogue with Microsoft, Google, and other major tech firms on AI ethics for several years.
AP reported that the encyclical is expected to “become a new flashpoint” between the pope and the Trump administration, which has made rapid AI development a national economic and security priority. The US has rejected international regulatory efforts to rein in AI and removed domestic bureaucratic obstacles.
The timing lands in the middle of a wild week for AI. Anthropic’s mega-round closes this week. OpenAI filed confidential IPO paperwork on Friday. Microsoft Build 2026 runs June 2-3 with AI agents as the central theme. Having the head of the Catholic Church weigh in on the ethics of all this, with 1.4 billion Catholics as his audience, adds a dimension that no earnings call or product launch can match.
Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, offered a pre-publication meditation in America Magazine that is worth reading regardless of your faith: “The machine can replace our humanity only if we allow it to first reduce our sense of ourselves to whatever we program the machine to do.” His advice for when the encyclical drops is blunt. “Don’t let ChatGPT read it for you.”
Sources: The Guardian, AP News, Vatican News, America Magazine