The Pope Just Weighed In On AI
AI, Innovation, and Faith
This wasn’t on my bingo card. I didn’t expect to be writing a piece about the Pope and AI this week. Not because the topic surprises me. I’ve been living at the intersection of faith and technology for years. I just didn’t see this discussion happening last Monday.
When the Pope releases the first-ever papal encyclical on artificial intelligence and invites an Anthropic co-founder to speak at the Vatican presentation, something significant has shifted. This wasn’t a press release or a denominational task force report. This is the Catholic Church’s highest level of formal teaching, deployed for the first time in history on the subject of AI. That’s kind of a big deal.
What Just Happened in Rome
On May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV released Magnifica Humanitas: “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” Full encyclical. Highest doctrinal weight with in the Catholic Church and it has global impact.
The title alone is worth thinking about over a few cups of coffee. Magnificent humanity. Not “dangerous AI.” Not “the threat of the machines.” The Pope’s framing is anthropological before it is technological. The question isn’t whether AI will harm us. The question is actually whether we will remain human.
The document draws a deliberate parallel to Rerum Novarum, the 1891 encyclical in which Leo XIII responded to the Industrial Revolution and laid the foundations of Catholic Social Doctrine. Leo XIV is doing the same thing for the AI era, 135 years later. Same name and same instinct, but a totally different moment.
What struck me most is the Pope isn’t calling for a moratorium on AI. He’s calling for discernment. This parallels my writings last week on this subject. You think the Pope reads my Substack? There’s a difference between a moratorium and discernment. Discernment assumes that the thing is real, that it has power, and that wisdom, not fear, is the appropriate response. That’s a pretty solid position in my opinion.
What an Anthropic Co-Founder Said at the Vatican
If the Pope’s encyclical was a surprise, here’s the part that I wasn’t really expecting. Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was also invited to speak at the Vatican presentation. My invitation must have gotten lost in the junk mail folder. Olah’s remarks are worth reading in full. I’ll tell you what stood out the most.
He opened by saying something most AI executives never say publicly. He said that every frontier AI lab, including Anthropic, operates inside incentives that can conflict with doing the right thing. Commercial pressure. Geopolitical pressure. Pride. Ambition. Those were his words, not mine. Then he said: if we want this technology to go well, it is enormously important that there be people outside those incentives, people willing to say hard things, willing to be earnest, thoughtful critics.
Olah might as well have opened up the confessional booth at the Vatican. He named three areas where he said the voice of people of faith is most needed.
The duty to the global poor if AI displaces labor at scale.
The moral imagination needed to define what human flourishing actually looks like in an AI world.
Ongoing discernment about the nature of AI models themselves.
The last one was really surprising to hear from an AI company leader. Olah said his research team keeps finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. Structures that mirror human neuroscience. Evidence of introspection. Internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, and grief.
He said, “I don’t know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment.”
This was a scientist… at the Vatican, asking for help to understand what he’s building. Whoa! That’s not a moment to scroll past. Also, if anyone knows him, send him my contact info!
Speak Up!
This is the time for the church to speak up. It’s something that several of us have been saying for the past few years. We just haven’t had the audience that the Pope has! We’ve already said things that directly address what the Pope said this week. The question is whether we’re willing to act like it.
In June 2023, the messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution on AI and emerging technologies. It stated clearly that our intrinsic value as human beings is rooted in our status as image bearers of God, not in what we contribute to society. That human dignity must be central to every ethical principle and guideline for AI. That we must engage proactively rather than simply react after AI has already affected our churches and communities.
A few years ago, several of us gathered in London to talk about how we apply AI in a missions context. Our Statement of Principles developed for missional contexts names something Olah only hinted. Technology isn’t just a tool we use; it actually forms us. The technologies humans use feed back into their societies and cultures. AI will change how people create, learn, and interact with new information. Missionaries must be attentive not just to heart language, but to heart medium.
That’s McLuhan applied to missiology before most missiologists knew they needed it.
At IMB, we’ve been talking through four important questions we should consider about AI.
Does this honor the image of God in every person it touches?
Does it empower human relationships or substitute for them?
Does this serve the mission?
Does solving this problem move the needle on the missionary task?
These are theological questions and they are the same questions the Pope is asking in different language from a different tradition.
Three Things to Consider
The frame matters
The encyclical opens with magnificence, not fear. Our resolution does too. It calls us to engage from a place of eschatological hope rather than uncritical embrace or fearful rejection. That’s the same posture. Confidence in who humans are. Clarity about what only God can do. Wisdom about where tools belong.
Most evangelical responses to AI swing between the extremes of uncritical enthusiasm and reflexive fear. The SBC resolution charts a third path. We should be leading with that posture, not reacting to everyone else’s.
The questions at the Vatican are the questions every Christian should be asking
What does human flourishing look like in an AI world? How do we protect human dignity in every deployment decision? Who holds the power, and toward what end? What happens to the people whose roles are disrupted? What happens to the unreached peoples whose cultures are reshaped by technologies they didn’t build and didn’t choose?
These aren’t abstract philosophical questions. They’re operational and decisions being made right now often without any framework at all.
The Church’s seat at this table is not guaranteed.
Olah said it plainly. We need people outside the incentives. (Here I am!) People who can see what the builders, from inside, cannot. The Church has historically refused to let the world ignore the questions that matter most. That tradition is needed now more than ever.
Influence requires presence because you can’t shape a conversation that you’re not in. The question is whether we’ll bring it to the table before the table is set without us.
What I Keep Coming Back To
There’s a line from Olah’s remarks I keep returning to. He described AI models as being a little like bringing a fictional character to life and now those characters speak to us, do work, and have jobs.
He’s right. The question of what character we choose, how it interacts with the world, and how it ought to interact with the world, he said plainly, “These are more clearly questions for the humanities, for religion, for philosophy, and for society at large.”
The builder of one of the most powerful AI systems in the world, standing in the Vatican, saying… we need you in this conversation. I’ve been saying the same thing to Christian leaders for the past few years. We don’t get to opt out of this because it’s technically complex. The questions are theological before they are technical. We have a framework. We have a tradition. We have a mission that depends on getting this right.
Religious leaders need to continue showing up and influence where the AI discussion takes us.
Read the full encyclical. Read Olah’s remarks at anthropic.com. And if your organization doesn’t yet have a theology of AI, start building one because the conversation is already happening without you.