Yesterday, Pope Leo xiv issued the first major theological text of his papacy: Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity).

• The 43,000-word encyclical warns about the growing power of artificial intelligence and its potential effects of eroding human judgment, deepening income inequality, destabilizing democracy, expediting war, and simulating care without relationship.
• He urged governments, corporations and individuals to slow the rate of innovation and take time to ensure that AI remains subject to ethical oversight.

Pope Leo presented the encyclical alongside Christopher Olah, cofounder of Anthropic, a massive U.S. artificial intelligence company.

• Olah said AI development must be guided by someone outside big tech and that he is eager for a church-tech partnership.

Anthropic’s “constitution” for its popular and powerful AI agent, Claude, lists as “external commenters” three Catholic thinkers: Secretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education Paul Tighe; priest Brendan McGuire, a former Silicon Valley executive; and Director of Technology Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Brian Patrick Green.

Olah said Catholic guidance is needed to “ensure the gains of AI are shared globally,” since its development is “concentrated in a handful of wealthy nations.” Ironically, the Vatican may end up being the first “wealthy nation” to make sure that it controls AI.

On May 10, 2025, in a meeting with the College of Cardinals, the newly elected pope said he chose the name Leo xiv because of Pope Leo xiii, who wrote the famous encyclical Rerum Novarum (Of New Things) in 1891 to deal with problems from the Industrial Revolution.

• Now, Pope Leo xiv has published Magnificent Humanity exactly 135 years later. He says the church must use its social teaching to face “another industrial revolution” caused by AI, and it must defend human dignity, justice and labor in this new technological age.

Of New Things advocated a so-called third way between the free market and socialism. In practice, however, it was just an updated version of the old medieval feudal system, with a politically empowered Roman Catholic Church guiding society.

• The Vatican cannot stop AI, so it is working with companies like Anthropic to shape and control it. The pope wants to once again increase the power of the Catholic Church over peoples, governments and nations, a recurring historical trend that is specifically prophesied in the Bible.

For more information on the Vatican’s efforts to control the economy, read “The Pope’s New World Order.”