5 ways Pope Leo says AI could warp humanity
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Pope Leo XIV celebrates the Holy Mass in Piazza Bartolo Longo, in front of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary. Photo: Grzegorz Galazka/Archivio Grzegorz Galazka/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images
Pope Leo XIV is warning that the artificial intelligence race could become a new Tower of Babel — a dazzling human achievement that concentrates power, weakens truth and turns people into data points.
Why it matters: The long-awaited document, Magnifica Humanitas ("Magnificent Humanity"), signals that the Vatican is aggressively positioning itself as a central moral authority in the global tech debate.
Driving the news: The Vatican released Leo's first encyclical on Monday, which he signed at St. Peter's on May 15, 2026, in the second year of his pontificate.
- It was signed exactly 135 years after Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, the landmark 1891 encyclical that became the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching during the Industrial Revolution.
Zoom in: The pope's core message in his stark, 43,000-word warning is that AI can be useful, but it is not neutral.
- He said AI systems carry the values of the people and institutions that design, finance, train and deploy them — especially when they decide who gets a job, credit, public services or reputational standing.
Leo gave the following warnings:
- AI can erode human judgment by offering instant answers that weaken creativity, discernment and the patience needed to seek truth.
- AI can simulate care without relationship, making vulnerable users mistake artificial empathy for genuine human connection.
- AI can deepen inequality because data, computing power and regulatory influence are concentrated among a small number of actors.
- AI can destabilize democracy by amplifying disinformation and blurring the line between fact and fiction.
- AI can make war easier by speeding up lethal decisions and distancing humans from responsibility. Leo's starkest line: "No algorithm can make war morally acceptable."
What they're saying: "Pope Leo has announced himself as one of the leading figures in AI ethics now with this document," Meghan Sullivan, director of Notre Dame's Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, tells Axios.
- Sullivan said Leo's AI encyclical is likely to be remembered as one of the major documents in Catholic history.
- Mirela Oliva, a philosophy professor at the University of St. Thomas, tells Axios that Leo's encyclical should be read less as a rejection of AI than as a call to shape the "AI era" around human dignity.
- "The pope is calling for new guidelines for AI, and these new guidelines are rather to be developed from the bottom up rather than top down."
What we're watching: Dan Rober, a Catholic Studies professor at Sacred Heart University, tells Axios the encyclical's biggest impact may be whether Leo's language starts shaping AI regulation debates.
- Rober said that Leo's warnings about children, screens, AI platforms and people using chatbots as therapists or substitutes for friendship could resonate well beyond Catholic circles.
