Vatican City- The Vatican reported on Saturday that the Pope Leo XIV has created a study group on artificial intelligence (AI)as he prepares to publish his first encyclical, which is expected to underscore the need for an ethics-based approach to this technology, prioritizing human dignity and peace.
He Vatican He indicated that Leo XIV decided to create the internal study group due to the acceleration in the use of AI, “its possible effects on human beings and on humanity as a whole; and the Church’s concern for the dignity of every human person.”
The announcement came a day after Leo signed his encyclical, exactly 135 years after his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, dated his most important encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” or “On New Things.” In that document, the late pontiff addressed workers’ rights, the limits of capitalism, and the obligations that states and employers had toward workers as the revolution advanced. Industrial revolution.
The document became the basis of modern Catholic social thought, and the current Catholic leader has already cited it in relation to the AI revolution, which he believes raises the same existential questions as the Industrial Revolution more than a century ago. The new encyclical is expected to place the AI issue in the context of the Church’s social teaching, which also encompasses issues such as work, justice and peace.
“I think the Catholic Church, in many ways, is going to be the adult in the room in some of these debates about how we integrate AI into the rest of our society,” said Meghan Sullivan, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame and director of its ethics institute. “Without a doubt, the pope will be one of the strongest defenders of human dignity in these discussions.”
A few days after his election in 2025, León told the cardinals who elected him that the Catholic church He owed it to the world to offer the “treasure of its social doctrine” to confront the challenges that AI poses to “human dignity, justice and work.”
It is likely that the publication of the encyclical, scheduled for the coming weeks, will become a new source of tension between León, born in Chicagoand the government of the president donald trumpwho has made the rapid development of AI a vital issue of economic strategy and national security. The United States has firmly rejected international regulatory efforts to curb AI, and the Trump administration has removed bureaucratic obstacles that slowed its development within the country.
The intense Vatican activity occurred as Trump concluded a visit to China that included business matters related to AI. Among those traveling with the president on Air Force One were, among others, Elon Muskwhose social network X includes its chatbot IA Grokand Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who recently won federal approval to sell H200 AI chips to Chinese buyers.
1 / 10 | This was the meeting between Pope Leo XIV and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed “efforts to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East” during a meeting at the Vatican. – The Associated Press
The Vatican wants its voice and values to be in the debate on AI
Since the beginning of the AI boom with the debut of ChatGPTthe impressive capabilities of that technology have amazed the world. Tech companies have rushed to develop better AI systems, even as experts warn of their risks, from existential but distant threats like runaway AIs to everyday problems like biases in algorithmic hiring systems.
The United Nations adopted a new governance architecture to curb AI last year, after previous multilateral efforts, including AI summits hosted by the United Kingdom, South Korea and France, only resulted in non-binding commitments. In 2024, the European Union passed its own Artificial Intelligence Law, applying a risk-based approach to its rules on that technology.
The Vatican has attempted to add its voice to the debate, offering ethical guidelines for the application of AI in sectors ranging from war to education and healthcare. The underlying call has been that technology should be used as a tool to complement, and not replace, human intelligence.
The Catholic Church has also warned about the environmental impact of the AI race, pointing to the “enormous amounts of energy and water” that AI data centers and computing power require.
“There are almost 1.5 billion Catholics in the world, so that fact alone is reason to pay attention,” said Thomas Harmon, a professor of theology at the University of St. “But beyond the numbers, the Catholic Church has a deep and sophisticated tradition of reflecting on what it means to be human.”
In 2020, the Vatican called on technology companies to join a commitment on AI, known as the Rome Call for an AI Ethicswhich, among other things, outlined fundamental principles for the regulation of that technology, including inclusion, accountability, fairness and privacy. Microsoft, IBM and Cisco were among the private sector companies that signed it.
In his last years, the Pope Francis called for an international treaty to regulate AI, stating that the risks of a technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness were too great to simply rely on the morality of AI researchers and developers.
1 / 22 | These are the 10 high-paying jobs that would not be replaced with AI. The newspaper El Diario reported a list of well-paid jobs with lower risk of automation, since they require human interaction, adaptation to changing situations and manual work in real environments. – Pablo Martínez Rodríguez
He also asserted his authority before the Group of Seven, speaking at a special session on the dangers and promises of AI in 2024. There, Francis argued that politicians must lead to ensure that AI remains human-centered, so that decisions about when to use weapons or even less lethal tools always continue to be made by people. Ultimately, he called for banning the use of lethal autonomous weapons, known colloquially as “killer robots.”
Leo XIV, connoisseur of AI, cares about peace, truth and human relationships
Internally, León has warned priests not to use AI to write their homilies. But the pope, who studied mathematics and does spend his free time scrolling through his phone screen, has also spoken out about the broader implications of AI for world peace, work and the very meaning of reality.
For the Augustinian pope, the ability of generative AI to misinform and deceive through deepfake images is especially worrying, given that the search for truth is a fundamental element of the spirituality of his religious order.
In a June 2025 speech to an AI conference, León recognized the contributions of generative AI to healthcare and scientific discovery. But he questioned “its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, on our particular capacity to understand and elaborate reality.”
León, who has emphasized a constant call for peace, has also called for monitoring how AI is used and developed in the war in the Middle East and Ukraine, where automated weapons systems use everything from aerial drones to maritime and land platforms.
“What is happening in Ukraine, Loop and the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Iran “It illustrates the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation,” he said this week at La Sapienza, Europe’s largest university.