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As artificial intelligence reshapes society, Pope Leo XIV positions the Church as a moral compass—echoing Leo XIII’s response to the Second Industrial Revolution
Pope Leo XIV is positioning artificial intelligence as the defining moral issue of our time, drawing a direct line to Pope Leo XIII’s response to the Second Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In doing so, he’s reminding us that even in an age of algorithms, the dignity of the human person must remain at the center of progress.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pope Leo XIV made headlines earlier this spring, not just for being the first American pontiff in history, but for identifying artificial intelligence as a moral frontier for the Catholic Church. While his election was met with the typical swirl of geopolitical intrigue and religious analysis, what stood out most to me were his early and repeated references to AI, not as a novelty, not as a threat, but as a new kind of “social question.”
In his first address to the College of Cardinals, Pope Leo XIV made it clear that his namesake—Leo XIII—wasn’t chosen by accident. Leo XIII was the author of Rerum Novarum, the groundbreaking 1891 encyclical that established Catholic social teaching in response to the Second Industrial Revolution. With workers being dehumanized by machines, exploited by capital, and stripped of dignity, Leo XIII challenged the Church to enter the modern age by defending labor, justice, and the common good.
Now, more than 130 years later, Leo XIV is drawing a straight line from that moment to this one. Where his predecessor responded to the steam engine and the factory, he is responding to algorithms and autonomous systems. Where Leo XIII warned against treating human beings like machines, Leo XIV is warning us not to confuse machines with human beings.
His message is clear: AI is not just a technological development. It’s a moral turning point.
A Moral Voice in a Technological Age
Leo XIV is offering a very different framework—one grounded in human dignity, ethical responsibility, and spiritual discernment. He’s not alone in seeing AI as disruptive, but unlike many corporate leaders or tech policy wonks, he’s placing the focus squarely on conscience.
“Today, one of the most important challenges is to promote communication that can bring us out of the ‘Tower of Babel’ in which we sometimes find ourselves, out of the confusion of loveless languages that are often ideological or partisan. [...] In looking at how technology is developing, this mission becomes ever more necessary,” Pope Leo XIV said. “I am thinking in particular of artificial intelligence, with its immense potential, which nevertheless requires responsibility and discernment in order to ensure that it can be used for the good of all, so that it can benefit all of humanity.”
Discernment. Not regulation. Not optimization. Discernment.
That word, drawn from the deep well of Christian spirituality, signals a fundamentally different posture toward technology. It doesn’t reject innovation, but it slows it down. It asks: Should we do this? Not just can we.
Leo XIV is not alone in this approach. Pope Francis, his immediate predecessor, spent years warning about the dangers of technological determinism, from climate change to digital manipulation. Francis called for an international treaty on AI ethics in 2023, and insisted that new technologies must “enhance, not replace” human interaction. Benedict XVI, before him, was more cautious, but also concerned with how digital culture might fragment social bonds and lead to relativism.
What distinguishes Leo XIV, however, is that he is not just reacting to AI. He seems determined to define the Church’s role in its development. Much like Leo XIII issued a theological and social charter for a rapidly industrializing world, Leo XIV is laying the foundation for a moral response to the AI revolution.
And he’s doing it fast.
From Conclave to Code: A Swift Shift in Focus
Since taking the chair of Peter, Leo XIV has repeatedly placed AI at the center of his public remarks, whether speaking to cardinals, journalists, diplomats, or the broader faithful. In his first official speech, he likened today’s technological upheaval to the first industrial revolution, warning that “developments in the field of artificial intelligence... pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor.”
He followed that with remarks to international journalists just two days later, calling on the media to report responsibly on AI and its consequences. Then, in a high-profile address to the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, he placed AI alongside climate change and migration as one of the three “contemporary challenges” that require collective ethical stewardship.
These are not throwaway lines. This is a doctrine in development.
The Vatican had already laid the groundwork with the January release of Antiqua et Nova—a theological note on artificial intelligence from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. While not penned by Leo XIV himself, the document reflects the moral trajectory he has fully embraced: AI is not to be feared or worshipped, but evaluated against the timeless principles of human dignity and the common good.
The document reminds us that only human beings are moral agents and can make decisions that carry ethical weight. AI may mimic intelligence, but it has no conscience. It cannot love, repent, or care—at least not yet.
And that’s the point. In a world increasingly tempted to automate decision-making—from hiring to diagnosis to lethal targeting—the Church insists on a pause—not a total stop but a re-centering. If AI is allowed to define what it means to be human, we risk forgetting what we actually are.
Continuity in Catholic Social Teaching
If Leo XIV’s AI stance feels bold, it’s also deeply consistent with Catholic social teaching. That’s what makes it so compelling. He’s not inventing a new doctrine out of whole cloth, but rather updating a centuries-old tradition for a new age.
The Church has always responded to the big disruptive forces of the day: the fall of Rome, the printing press, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the atomic age. In each era, it has offered both a critique and a path forward, balancing reason and faith, science and soul.
In that spirit, Leo XIV is channeling not just Leo XIII but also John Paul II—who argued that technology must serve the human person, not the other way around—and even John XXIII, who opened the Second Vatican Council with the idea that the Church must read “the signs of the times.”
AI is a sign of our time. Possibly the sign.
And Leo XIV is reading it aloud.
Toward a New “Rerum Novarum”?
There’s a growing expectation that this pope will eventually issue a full encyclical on artificial intelligence and emerging technologies. If he does, it will likely take its place alongside Rerum Novarum, Laudato Si, and Pacem in Terris as a foundational text in the Church’s social doctrine.
But even before that happens, he’s already shaping the conversation. He’s shifted the focus from innovation to intention. From disruption to discernment. From profit to people.
In doing so, Pope Leo XIV is not just responding to AI but redefining our relationship to it. Not as adversaries, not as slaves, but as creators made in the image of God, with the moral responsibility to ensure that our tools serve life rather than diminish it.
In a time when so many leaders are asking how to compete with AI, Pope Leo XIV asks a deeper question: How do we remain fully human in its presence?
It’s a question we would all do well to consider.
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I share similar sentiments. I wrote this recently. There is a huge flood coming because of AI. An epistemological fatigue will follow. https://stilicho.substack.com/p/we-were-not-meant-to-know-everythingonly
This is an important piece. Such depth here. Discernment. Ethics. Revisiting our values in a time where the lines are so fuzzy. Thank you. I’m a writer and know AI cannot understand dignity or the human soul. It also cannot be funny (if AI is writing jokes, I don’t want to know).