What Pope Leo XIV Has Said About AI and the Catholic Church

A Pope Named for the Digital Age

When Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago was elected Pope on May 8, 2025, taking the name Leo XIV, the significance of that choice was immediately clear. Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the upheavals of the first industrial revolution, is remembered as the social teaching pope. Leo XIV has said explicitly that he chose the name because he sees in artificial intelligence a second industrial revolution — one that poses "new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor."

In a pontificate barely one year old, Pope Leo XIV has already addressed AI in multiple significant contexts. Here is what he has said and what the Catholic Church teaches about this rapidly evolving technology.

What Pope Leo XIV Has Said

In his first speech to the College of Cardinals, Leo XIV stated: "The Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor."

At a Vatican conference on AI governance in June 2025, he elaborated: "Our personal life has greater value than any algorithm, and social relationships require spaces for development that far transcend the limited patterns that any soulless machine can provide." He called on world leaders to ensure AI serves "the well-being of the human person not only materially, but also intellectually and spiritually."

Leo XIV has been particularly concerned with AI's impact on work and labor — echoing Leo XIII's concern for workers in the industrial age — and with the welfare of children in an AI-shaped digital environment.

What Came Before: The Church's AI Framework

Pope Leo XIV did not begin this conversation. His predecessor Pope Francis addressed AI repeatedly and was the first head of state to address the G7 on AI ethics (June 2024). In 2020, the Pontifical Academy for Life released the "Rome Call for AI Ethics," which major tech companies including Microsoft and IBM signed, calling for AI development guided by transparency, inclusion, accountability, and respect for human dignity.

The document Antiqua et Nova (January 2025), issued by the Dicasteries for the Doctrine of the Faith and for Culture and Education, offered the most comprehensive Catholic analysis of AI to date. It contrasted the human intellect — relational, creative, spiritually oriented — with AI systems that operate through pattern recognition and statistical inference, lacking genuine understanding, consciousness, or moral agency.

What the Church Teaches About AI

The Catholic position on AI is neither technophobic nor uncritical. The Church consistently affirms several core principles:

Human dignity is non-negotiable. AI must serve the human person — not replace, diminish, or reduce the human person to data points. Every AI application must be evaluated against the question: does it respect and promote human dignity?

AI is a tool, not a subject. No matter how sophisticated, AI systems lack consciousness, free will, genuine understanding, or moral agency. They cannot be held responsible, cannot suffer, cannot have rights. Treating AI as a quasi-person is a category error that obscures the uniqueness of the human person.

Justice and equity matter. AI must not widen inequality. AI systems trained on biased data produce biased outputs. The poor and vulnerable are most at risk from AI systems they cannot access, challenge, or opt out of.

Human oversight is essential. The Church supports strong governance, regulation, and ethical frameworks for AI. It calls specifically for mechanisms that allow individuals to understand and challenge automated decisions that affect their lives.

AI in Catholic Life

The Church is navigating its own relationship with AI in pastoral and evangelization contexts. Tools like GlobalCatholic.ai use AI to personalize Scripture delivery and reflection — always grounded in authentic Church sources, never replacing the priest, the sacraments, or human spiritual direction. The Church's own Antiqua et Nova document acknowledges that AI can serve education, accessibility, and outreach when properly ordered to human flourishing and truth.