Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, will be published on 25 May and will address artificial intelligence and the protection of human dignity, the Vatican has announced.

The encyclical, the title of which is Latin for ‘Magnificent Humanity’, was signed by the Pope on 15 May, the 135th anniversary of Rerum novarum, Pope Leo XIII’s foundational 1891 social encyclical on labour and capital written during the first industrial revolution. The next day, Pope Leo also approved the creation of an Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

In an unprecedented first, Pope Leo XIV will be present in person at the Vatican press conference to mark the publication of the social encyclical, along with a tech founder from one of the world’s fastest growing AI companies.

Christopher Olah, co-founder of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, which developed the AI large language model (LLM) named Claude, will speak on a panel presenting the document at the Vatican’s Synod Hall on 25 May at 11.30am local time.

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 defence of human dignity, justice and labour.

Also joining the panel will be Anna Rowlands, a British theologian specialising in Catholic Social Teaching, who helped organise the Synod on Synodality, and Léocadie Lushombo, a professor of theological ethics at the Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University. Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Integral Human Development, will also take part in the press conference. Pope Leo XIV and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, will give speeches at the end of the press conference.

Pope Leo XIV has expressed interest in the issue of artificial intelligence and the dignity of work since the first week of his pontificate, telling the College of Cardinals days after his election in May 2025 that he took his papal name partly in honour of Pope Leo XIII, whose landmark encyclical Rerum novarum has shaped the Church’s social teaching for more than a century.

‘In our own day, 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 defence of human dignity, justice and labour,’ Pope Leo XIV said two days after his election.

The first American pope and a former mathematics major, Pope Leo has returned to the subject of AI again and again in speeches, messages and interviews in his first year, leading Time magazine to include him on its 2025 list of the world’s most influential people in artificial intelligence, with the magazine describing him as a spiritual counterweight to Silicon Valley.

Pope Leo has addressed the issue of AI in venues ranging from a sports stadium packed with teenagers, whom he told to use AI ‘in such a way that if it disappeared tomorrow, you would still know how to think’, to a gathering of legislators from 68 countries, where he insisted that artificial intelligence is a tool meant to serve human beings, not replace them. The Pope has also warned priests not to use chatbots to write their homilies and expressed concern for AI’s potential effect on children’s ‘intellectual and neurological development’.

Much of the human creative industry [is put] at risk of being dismantled and replaced with the label ‘Powered by AI’, turning people into passive consumers of unthought thoughts and anonymous products without ownership or love.

The Pope’s 2026 message for the 60th World Day of Social Communications, published in January, has been his most robust document on AI and protecting human dignity to date. In the papal message, he underlined that ‘our faces and voices are unique, distinctive features of every person’ that reveal ‘a person’s own unrepeatable identity’ and that by ‘simulating human voices and faces, wisdom and knowledge, consciousness and responsibility, empathy and friendship’, AI systems ‘encroach upon the deepest level of communication, that of human relationships’.

Pope Leo also warned that AI systems ‘have increasingly taken control of the production of texts, music and videos’, putting ‘much of the human creative industry at risk of being dismantled and replaced with the label “Powered by AI”, turning people into passive consumers of unthought thoughts and anonymous products without ownership or love’.

‘The ability to access vast amounts of data and information should not be confused with the ability to derive meaning and value from it. The latter requires a willingness to confront the mystery and core questions of our existence,’ Pope Leo said in a December speech to participants in an AI conference.

‘It will therefore be essential to teach young people to use these tools with their own intelligence, ensuring that they open themselves to the search for truth.’

Pope approves creation of commission on AI

On 16 May, the day after signing his first encyclical, Pope Leo approved the creation of an Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence. The document approving the commission was signed by Cardinal Czerny.

The Pope approved the establishment of the commission while considering ‘the development in recent decades of the phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence and the most recent accelerations in its widespread use; its potential effects on human beings and on humanity as a whole; the Church’s concern for the dignity of every human person, especially in relation to their integral development,’ said the document, which was dated 12 May.

Pope Leo approved the creation of the interdicasterial body following an audience with Cardinal Czerny on 3 May. The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development will coordinate the work of the commission for the first year.

The rescript explained that the commission is made up of representatives from seven Vatican bodies: the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Dicastery for Culture and Education, the Dicastery for Communication, the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.

This is not the first time dicasteries have come together to address artificial intelligence.

Each of these institutions will be responsible for coordinating the commission in turns for one-year terms, which can be renewed. The Pope would then decide the next body that will lead the works of the commission.

The text explains that ‘it is the responsibility of the coordinating institution to facilitate collaboration and the exchange of information among group members regarding activities and projects related to Artificial Intelligence, including policies on its use within the Holy See, while promoting dialogue, communion, and participation.’

Cardinal Czerny established the body according to Article 28 of the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate evangelium, under which the head of a dicastery may create a special interdicasterial commission to address matters that touch the responsibilities of several dicasteries and that require ‘mutual and frequent consultation’.

This is not the first time dicasteries have come together to address this issue. In January 2025, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education published the doctrinal note Antiqua et nova (‘Old and New’) on the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence.