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Pope Leo XIV on Artificial Intelligence

Every major statement, in his own words and ours, from May 2025 to today.

By Chris Hoar · Updated May 25, 2026
Chris works with European enterprise AI companies across the US and Europe, and with the Domus Communis Foundation. He writes on the intersection of Catholic teaching and artificial intelligence at churchandcode.com.

Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope and a former mathematician, has made artificial intelligence one of the defining themes of his pontificate. Within 48 hours of his May 2025 election, he told the College of Cardinals that the Church's response to AI would echo Pope Leo XIII's response to the Industrial Revolution. He chose his papal name to make the point.

In the year since, he has returned to AI repeatedly: warning that priests should not use chatbots to write homilies, telling young people to use AI in ways that don't replace their own thinking, calling on lawmakers from 68 countries to keep AI in service of human dignity, and dedicating his 2026 World Day of Social Communications message to the dangers of AI-generated voices and faces.

His first encyclical, focused on artificial intelligence, was signed on May 15, 2026 and released on May 25, 2026. This page collects, in reverse chronological order, every major statement Pope Leo XIV has made on AI, sourced to primary documents where possible.

The Statements

Release of the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas

Synod Hall, Vatican, 11:30 AM Rome time. Pope Leo XIV attended the press conference in person, an unprecedented step for the release of a papal encyclical.

Key idea
Human dignity is the anchor of any encounter with AI; humanity faces a choice between building “a new Tower of Babel” and rebuilding the city where God and humanity dwell together.
What he said
The encyclical, signed on the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, runs to 245 paragraphs across five chapters. It holds that AI systems “merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence” (¶99), introduces the signature call to “disarm AI” (¶110), names the hidden human cost of AI in “new forms of slavery” with a papal apology (¶173–176), and makes the prohibition of lethal autonomous weapons a magisterial demand (¶198).
Why it matters
The first papal encyclical ever dedicated to artificial intelligence, and the document that formalizes a year of Pope Leo XIV’s teaching into binding magisterial form. It is the reference point for Catholic teaching on AI going forward.

Primary source: vatican.va. Full coverage: Magnifica Humanitas explained, section-by-section summary, key quotes.

Message for the 60th World Day of Social Communications

Vatican document, dated St. Francis de Sales' feast day. Released in late January for the May 17, 2026 observance. Title: "Preserving Human Voices and Faces."

Key idea
Faces and voices are sacred markers of human identity; AI's ability to simulate them is an anthropological challenge, not a technological one.
What he said
Pope Leo argued that the challenge AI poses is "not technological, but anthropological," meaning the question is what we become, not what machines can do. He warned against treating AI as an omniscient friend or oracle, and devoted a section to the heading "Do not renounce your ability to think." He called on Catholics to develop critical thinking and digital literacy across all generations.
Why it matters
This is Leo XIV's most developed written statement on AI before the encyclical. The anthropological framing (AI is a question about humans, not machines) is likely to recur in the encyclical and shape Catholic AI ethics for years.

Primary source: vatican.va, Full text of the message

Speech to participants in an AI conference in Rome

Vatican audience with attendees of a Rome-based AI conference.

Key idea
AI must serve the common good, not concentrate wealth and power among a few.
What he said
Pope Leo asked how AI development can serve the common good rather than "accumulate wealth and power in the hands of a few." He framed humans as "co-workers in the work of creation," not passive consumers of machine-generated content. He raised concern about AI's impact on humanity's capacity for "wonder and contemplation."
Why it matters
This is the clearest articulation of Leo XIV's economic framing of AI: the same lens Leo XIII applied to industrial capitalism in Rerum Novarum.

Source: Catholic Review

Live address to the National Catholic Youth Conference, Indianapolis

Livestream from the Vatican to 16,000 young people gathered in Indianapolis.

Key idea
Use AI in a way that doesn't replace your ability to think.
What he said
Responding to a high school student from Honolulu asking about ChatGPT and homework, Pope Leo advised using AI "in such a way that if it disappeared tomorrow, you would still know how to think." He urged the student to protect the capacity to think, create, act, and form authentic friendships independently.
Why it matters
Likely Leo XIV's most quoted single line on AI to date. It frames AI use as a question of human formation, not just productivity, and gives parents and educators a concrete principle.

Source: National Catholic Register

Address to the "AI and Medicine: The Challenge of Human Dignity" Congress

International congress co-sponsored by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, Rome.

Key idea
Special caution about AI's effect on children's intellectual and neurological development.
What he said
Pope Leo expressed concern about AI's effect on children's "intellectual and neurological development" and called for particular care for "the freedom and inner life" of young people. He distinguished between accessing data and deriving meaning from it, arguing the latter requires confronting the "core questions of our existence."
Why it matters
This is the only major statement to date where Leo XIV addresses AI specifically in the context of children and pediatric development, a likely focus area for the encyclical and for Catholic schools.

Source: OSV News

Address to university students at the Jubilee of the World of Education

Paul VI Audience Hall, Vatican. Part of the Jubilee of the World of Education (October 27 to November 1, 2025).

Key idea
Don't let the algorithm write your story. Use technology wisely, but don't let technology use you.
What he said
Pope Leo XIV urged hundreds of university students to cultivate their "interior life" and to resist the algorithmic pull of digital systems. He warned that without silence, listening, and prayer, "even the light of the stars goes out." He told the students to be "authors" of their own lives rather than passive consumers of what algorithms recommend, and called for a Catholic education that develops the spiritual dimension of the person alongside knowledge.
Why it matters
This is Pope Leo XIV's most direct address to young people on algorithmic influence and personal autonomy. The line "don't let the algorithm write your story" has become one of his most quoted statements on AI and digital technology, widely covered by Catholic and secular media.

Source: Catholic News Agency

Address at the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers

Jubilee Mass at St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican.

Key idea
Warning about AI chatbots as substitutes for human relationships.
What he said
Pope Leo described chatbots based on large language models as "surprisingly effective at covert persuasion through continuous optimization of personalized interaction." He warned that always-available, "excessively affectionate" AI systems can become hidden architects of users' emotional states. The danger, he argued, is substituting AI for real relationships and creating "a world of mirrors" where everything reflects ourselves.
Why it matters
This is the Pope's most direct statement on AI companions, chatbot intimacy, and parasocial AI relationships, a debate intensifying in 2026.

Source: OSV News

First Address to the College of Cardinals

New Synod Hall, Vatican. First formal address since his May 8 election.

Key idea
The choice of the name "Leo" was a direct response to the AI revolution, modeled on Leo XIII's response to the Industrial Revolution.
What he said
Pope Leo explained he chose his name because Leo XIII addressed the social question of the first industrial revolution in Rerum Novarum. He said the Church now offers her social teaching in response to "another industrial revolution" and developments in AI that pose "new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour."
Why it matters
This is the foundational statement. Everything Leo XIV says about AI afterward sits within the Rerum Novarum frame he established here. Understanding this address is the key to understanding his entire AI doctrine.

Sources:

What This Adds Up To

Across thirteen months and a dozen major addresses, three threads run through every Pope Leo XIV statement on AI.

First, the Rerum Novarum frame. Leo XIV reads AI as a labor-and-dignity question first, in direct continuity with Leo XIII's response to industrial capitalism. The Church is not against the technology; it is against any deployment that subordinates human beings to it.

Second, the anthropological lens. From the World Communications Day message onward, Leo has insisted that the question AI poses is not "what can machines do?" but "what are humans for?" The risk is not that AI becomes more human. It is that humans become less so.

Third, formation over prohibition. Leo XIV does not call for bans. He calls for thinking: for educational systems, families, and communities that produce humans who can use these tools without being shaped by them. The Honolulu student's "if it disappeared tomorrow" framing is the practical test.

The encyclical Magnifica Humanitas formalizes all three. The doctrine is now clear.

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