Silicon Valley figures and Western diplomats have held a series of meetings with Vatican officials ahead of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical on artificial intelligence. Politico and Business Insider report that an April 29 delegation including representatives from Meta, Google and Amazon met briefly with Pope Leo XIV and then held a longer discussion at the French embassy to the Holy See. Religion News Service and NCR report that Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah is scheduled to appear with the pope when the encyclical, titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” is presented; NCR and RNS detail prior Anthropic briefings for Christian leaders at the company’s San Francisco offices. Reporting also records public debate and criticism about Olah’s participation, per the New York Post. Sources describe these engagements as part of a wider outreach by tech firms to influence ethical and moral deliberations around AI.
