Introduction: A Pope Speaks to the Age of the Machine
On May 25, 2026, in the Synod Hall of the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV personally presented the first encyclical of his pontificate. Titled Magnifica Humanitas — “Magnificent Humanity” — the roughly 42,300-word document is subtitled On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. In an unusual gesture, the Pope did not delegate the unveiling to a cardinal but attended in person, greeted by sustained applause from members of the Roman Curia, academics, and the diplomatic corps.
For the Bible-believing Christian, the document and the spectacle surrounding it deserve careful attention — not because the Roman pontiff speaks for God (he does not), but because the encyclical reveals, once again, the abiding ambition of the Roman system: to position itself as the moral authority over the great questions of the age, and to call upon governments and institutions to control what people may build, say, and know. As this publication has long maintained, drawing on the witness of the Reformers and the plain testimony of Scripture, the papacy is not a benevolent shepherd of humanity but the seat of that great apostasy the Bible calls Antichrist. With that understanding firmly in view, let us examine what this document actually says.
I. The Man: Who Is Pope Leo XIV?
Pope Leo XIV was born Robert Francis Prevost on September 14, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a school administrator and a librarian. He is the first American-born pope and the first from the Order of Saint Augustine. He studied mathematics at Villanova University, a school founded by the Augustinians, before entering the order in 1977 and taking his solemn vows in 1981. He was ordained a priest in Rome in 1982 and earned a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Much of his ministry was spent as a missionary in Peru, where he later became a naturalized citizen and eventually served as a bishop. Pope Francis brought him to Rome in 2023 as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops — the office that recommends the appointment of bishops worldwide — and elevated him to cardinal that same year. Upon the death of Francis, the conclave elected Prevost on May 8, 2025, and he took the name Leo XIV.
That choice of name is itself significant. He has deliberately linked his pontificate to Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the upheavals of the first Industrial Revolution. Leo XIV has cast artificial intelligence as the “new industrial revolution” of our time, and he timed the release of Magnifica Humanitas to fall on the 135th anniversary of that earlier document. The message is clear: the Roman Church intends to be the defining moral voice over the technological transformation of the world, just as it sought to be over the industrial one.
II. The Encyclical and Its Unusual Guest
An encyclical is among the most authoritative teaching documents a pope can issue. Magnifica Humanitas is divided into an introduction and five chapters spanning 245 numbered paragraphs. The first two chapters trace the development of Roman “social doctrine” from Leo XIII to the present. The third — the heart of the document — addresses what the Pope calls the “technocratic paradigm” and the imbalance of digital power. The fourth treats truth, democracy, work, and education; the fifth addresses war and the “civilization of love.”
Notably, the document was the first papal encyclical published without an official Latin version, following a recent change to Vatican rules. The symbolism is worth pausing over: the church that for centuries bound the Scriptures and her own liturgy in a Latin the common man could not read now issues her teaching in the vernacular when it serves her purpose — a reminder that Rome’s use of language has always been a tool of control rather than a principle of conviction.
Among the speakers invited to present the encyclical was Christopher Olah, the Canadian co-founder of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic. In remarks before the Pope’s own address, Olah argued that for AI to “go well” it is important to have people outside the commercial incentives — people willing to insist on safety and to act as “earnest, thoughtful critics.” He expressed gratitude to the Pope and the Church for “taking up this work of discernment.” The presence of a leading figure from the AI industry, lending his voice to a papal call for greater oversight, is precisely the kind of alliance between technological power and Roman authority that the discerning believer should watch closely.
A Word on Chris Olah
Christopher Olah is a self-taught Canadian researcher, born in Toronto, who rose to prominence in the field of machine learning without completing a university degree. He worked at Google Brain and then led interpretability research at OpenAI before co-founding Anthropic in 2021, a company that markets itself as devoted to “AI safety.” He is widely regarded as a pioneer of so-called “mechanistic interpretability” — the attempt to understand the inner workings of these systems. His personal religious convictions are not a matter of public record, and we will not presume to assign him any; what is relevant here is not his private belief but the public act of an immensely influential technologist standing at a Vatican podium to commend the Pope’s vision of controlled technology to the world.
III. Chapter 3 — “Technology and Dominance”: The Stated Risks
The third chapter, which the Pope and his commentators consider the core of the encyclical, opens with the concept of the “technocratic paradigm,” a term Leo XIV borrows from Pope Francis’s 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Si’. He defines it as the tendency to let the logic of efficiency, control, and profit alone shape human life — warning that “every choice” may come to be “dictated exclusively by measuring efficiency and profits.” He cautions that the most powerful technology is not necessarily the best, and that AI, however sophisticated, possesses no moral conscience, no empathy, and no spiritual capacity.
From there the chapter catalogs a series of genuine and widely shared concerns about artificial intelligence. Among them:
The concentration of power in private hands — what the Pope calls the “new monopolies of AI” — in which a handful of corporations control a technology of immense reach. The displacement of human workers as automation spreads across industries. The erosion of privacy through pervasive data collection. The spread of disinformation, amplified by AI’s ability to manipulate images, video, and text and to produce convincing deepfakes. And the environmental costs of the technology, which consumes large quantities of energy and water — affecting, in the Pope’s words, “Creation” itself.
It must be said plainly: many of these concerns are legitimate. The Christian need not pretend that artificial intelligence carries no dangers, nor that the men who build it are beyond reproach. The displacement of workers, the invasion of privacy, and the flood of fabricated content are real problems. But the question for the believer is never merely what a man identifies as a problem; it is what solution he proposes, by what authority, and to what end. And it is here that the encyclical reveals its true character.
IV. The Three Central Concerns — Examined
Beneath the long list of risks, three intertwined themes form the real argument of the document, and each deserves scrutiny.
The encyclical’s central practical demand is for greater control. It calls for “adequate AI policies and legal frameworks, independent oversight, and user education,” and insists that the use of technologies be “subjected to public oversight.” Most revealingly, the Pope writes that “a more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few” (§107) — and yet his proposed remedy is to shift that determination to other hands: governments, international bodies, and, implicitly, the moral authority of the Roman Church herself.
The believer should notice the move carefully. The complaint is not merely that AI may be misused; it is that the technology is too widely distributed, too much in the hands of ordinary people and private builders, and not sufficiently governed by central authority. The proposed cure for the “concentration of power” is, ironically, a different concentration of power — one in which Rome positions herself as the conscience that the governments of the world ought to heed.
The encyclical devotes substantial attention to “disinformation,” warning that AI’s ability to manipulate content “exposes people to biased or misleading perspectives” (§132), and calling for norms so that “the decision-making behind content selection… becomes more transparent” (§137). On its surface this sounds reasonable. But the word “disinformation” should give every thinking person pause, for we have seen recently and vividly what governments and corporations do with the power to decide what counts as “misinformation.”
During the worldwide COVID-19 shutdowns, the term “disinformation” became the justification for an unprecedented campaign of censorship. Governments — including agencies of the United States — colluded with technology companies to suppress not only fringe claims but the considered opinions of credentialed physicians and scientists who dissented from the official narrative. Information that was branded “disinformation” one year was quietly acknowledged as legitimate the next. The lesson was unmistakable: whoever holds the power to define “disinformation” holds the power to silence the truth.
To its credit, the encyclical states that “truthful information does not arise from centralized or automated control” (§132). Yet the entire thrust of the document is toward more oversight, more norms, more institutional gatekeeping of what people may see and say. Rome has always understood that to govern what men may know is to govern men. The same instinct that filters information in Communist China, Russia, and North Korea — the conviction that the people cannot be trusted with unfiltered truth and must be guided by their betters — wears, in this document, the gentler garments of “discernment” and “the common good.”
The deepest concern is historical. The call for governments and global institutions to regulate technology according to the moral framework articulated by the Vatican is not a new posture for Rome; it is the oldest one she has. Throughout the Middle Ages, the papacy did not merely teach — she moved kings and emperors, crowned and deposed monarchs, and bent the civil sword to enforce her will. From the Holy Roman Empire to the Inquisition, Rome’s genius has always been to position herself as the indispensable moral authority above the nations, so that earthly governments became instruments of her dominion.
When Rome speaks of “the common good” and calls on the powers of the world to submit their technologies to oversight, she is reprising a very old role. And the end toward which that role is directed is, and has always been, the advancement of a system of religion built on works — on sacraments, penances, indulgences, and human merit — rather than on the free grace of God in Jesus Christ. That is the agenda beneath the agenda, and no amount of enlightened concern for privacy or the environment changes it.
V. Is There a Greater Emphasis on Control Than on Freedom?
Reading the encyclical as a whole, the answer is plainly yes. While it pays lip service to the dangers of centralized control, its consistent practical recommendation is for more oversight, more regulation, more subjection of technology and information to institutional authority. The document’s favored metaphor — the choice between “constructing Babel and rebuilding Jerusalem” — casts unregulated human enterprise as prideful rebellion and casts the alternative, naturally, as the ordered community over which the Church presides.
There is a deep irony here that the Bible-reading Christian will not miss. The original tower of Babel (Genesis 11) was condemned by God not because men built freely, but because they sought to centralize humanity under one authority, one name, and one power in defiance of God — “let us make us a name.” The encyclical invokes Babel as a warning against unregulated technology, yet the consolidation of moral and informational authority into a single institution is itself far closer to the Babel spirit than the dispersed liberty it warns against.
VI. What Saith the Scripture?
The believer evaluates all things, including the pronouncements of popes, by the Word of God alone. And Scripture speaks directly to the matters this encyclical raises.
On the question of authority and truth, the Bible nowhere appoints a human institution as the arbiter of what men may know. The Bereans were commended precisely because they did not accept teaching on authority, but “searched the scriptures daily” for themselves:
On the matter of salvation — the true agenda beneath Rome’s pursuit of earthly authority — the gospel could not be more opposed to a religion of works and human merit:
On the concentration of human power in defiance of God, the example of Babel stands as a permanent warning:
And on the spirit that exalts a man to the place of moral authority over the conscience of the nations, the Apostle Paul’s warning of the “man of sin” remains the surest guide:
A Word of Discernment: The Christian can agree that artificial intelligence carries real dangers — to work, to privacy, to truth — without for a moment accepting that the remedy lies in submitting the world’s conscience to the Bishop of Rome. The encyclical’s genuine insights do not sanctify its source or its aim. The same institution that for centuries forbade the common man to read the Scriptures in his own tongue, that filtered all knowledge through her priesthood, now steps forward to guide humanity through the age of the machine. Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God (1 John 4:1).
VII. Conclusion: Old Ambitions in New Garments
Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas is a sophisticated and, in places, perceptive document. It identifies real problems and it speaks in the measured, humane language of concern for the dignity of man. But for those who know the history of Rome and the testimony of Scripture, the underlying movement is unmistakable. It is the same movement we have witnessed for fifteen centuries: the positioning of the papacy as the moral governor of the nations, the call for earthly powers to submit their affairs to her oversight, and the gathering of authority into one center under the banner of the common good.
The technology is new. The cameras, the applause, the presence of a Silicon Valley founder at the Vatican podium — these are the trappings of our moment. But the ambition is ancient. And the answer for the Christian is the same as it has always been: not the voice of a man in Rome, but the voice of God in His Word; not a religion of works and control, but the free grace of Christ; not filtered truth dispensed by a self-appointed authority, but the Scriptures, open to every man, by which all things — popes and machines alike — must be tried.
Sources
- The Holy Bible (King James Version) — Genesis 11; Acts 17:11; Ephesians 2:8–9; 2 Thessalonians 2:4; Isaiah 8:20; 1 John 4:1.
- Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence (signed May 15, 2026; published May 25, 2026). Holy See / vatican.va.
- “Pope Leo Uses First Major Papal Text to Warn About Dangers of AI,” TIME (May 25, 2026).
- “Pope Leo XIV Unveils First Encyclical on AI,” EWTN Vatican (May 2026) — reporting on Christopher Olah’s remarks.
- “Magnifica Humanitas,” Vatican News and the Word on Fire overview of Chapter 3 (May 2026).
- “Magnifica Humanitas” entry, Wikipedia, and the Pillar live coverage of the technocratic paradigm and disinformation sections.
- Biography of Robert Francis Prevost (Pope Leo XIV), Vatican News and Britannica.
- Biographical material on Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic.