Pope Creates AI Study Group in Preparation For First Encyclical
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo
The Vatican said Leo decided to create the internal study group because of the accelerating use of AI, “its potential effects on human beings and on humanity as a whole (and) the Church’s concern for the dignity of every human being.”
The announcement came a day after Leo signed his encyclical, 135 years to the day after his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, dated his most important encyclical, “Rerum Novarum,” or New Things. This document discussed workers’ rights, the limits of capitalism, and the obligations that states and employers had toward workers while the Industrial Revolution was underway.
It has become the foundation of modern Catholic social thought, and the current pope has already cited it in relation to the AI revolution, which he says poses the same existential questions that the industrial revolution posed more than a century ago. The new encyclical is expected to place the issue of AI in the context of the Church’s social teaching, which also covers issues such as work, justice and peace.
“I think the Catholic Church, in many ways, will be the adult present in some of these debates about how we’re going to integrate AI into the rest of our society,” said Meghan Sullivan, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame who directs its ethics institute. “Of course, the pope will be one of the most ardent defenders of human dignity in these discussions.”
Just days after his election in 2025, Leo told the cardinals who named him pope that the Catholic Church had a duty to the world to offer the “treasure of its social teaching” to confront the challenges posed by AI to “human dignity, justice and work.”
The public release of the encyclical, expected in the coming weeks, will likely become a new sticking point between Chicago-born Leo and the Trump administration, which has made the rapid development of AI a matter of vital economic strategy and national security. The United States has strongly rejected international regulatory efforts to curb AI, and the Trump administration has removed bureaucratic hurdles that slowed its development domestically.
The whirlwind of Vatican activity came as U.S. President Donald Trump wrapped up a visit to China that included AI-related activities. Traveling with Trump on Air Force One were Elon Musk, whose social media platform
Since the AI boom began with the debut of ChatGPT, the technology’s breathtaking capabilities have amazed the world. Tech companies have rushed to develop better AI systems, even as experts warn of its risks, ranging from existential but distant threats like malicious AIs running amok to everyday problems like bias in algorithmic recruiting systems.
Last year, the United Nations adopted a new governance architecture to harness AI after previous multilateral efforts, including AI summits hosted by Britain, South Korea and France, resulted in only non-binding commitments. In 2024, the EU adopted its own artificial intelligence law, applying a risk-based approach to its AI rules.
The Vatican has sought to add its voice to the debate, proposing ethical guidelines for the application of AI in sectors ranging from warfare to education and healthcare. The underlying idea is that technology should be used as a tool to complement, not replace, human intelligence.
The Vatican also warned of the environmental impact of the AI race, highlighting the “vast amounts of energy and water” needed for data centers and AI computing power.
“There are almost a billion and a half Catholics in the world, so that alone is reason to pay attention,” said Thomas Harmon, a theology professor at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. “But beyond the numbers, the Catholic Church has a deep and sophisticated tradition of thinking about what it means to be human. »
In 2020, the Vatican asked tech companies to sign an AI pledge, known as the Rome Call for AI Ethics, which, among other things, outlined the core principles of AI regulation, including inclusiveness, accountability, impartiality and privacy. Microsoft, IBM and Cisco were among the private sector companies that signed.
In his later years, Pope Francis called for an international treaty to regulate AI, saying the risks of technology lacking the human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness were too great to simply rely on the morality of AI researchers and developers.
He also asserted his authority within the Group of Seven, during a special session on the perils and promises of AI in 2024. In that session, Francis said that politicians must take the lead in ensuring that AI remains human-centered, so that decisions about when to use weapons or even less-lethal tools still remain made by humans. He ultimately called for a ban on the use of lethal autonomous weapons, commonly known as “killer robots.”
Internally, Leo warned priests against using AI to write their homilies. But the mathematician pope, who spends his free time checking his phone, has also raised his voice 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 doctored images is particularly worrying, given that the search for truth is a fundamental part of the spirituality of his religious order.
In a June 2025 speech at an AI conference, Leo recognized the contributions of generative AI to healthcare and scientific discovery. But he wonders about “its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, on our particular capacity to grasp reality.”
Leo, who highlighted a constant call for peace, also called for monitoring how AI is used and developed in wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, where automated weapons systems use everything from aerial drones to maritime and land-based platforms.
“What is happening in Ukraine, Gaza and the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Iran illustrates the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation,” he said last week at La Sapienza, Europe’s largest university.
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