Pope Leo XIV has entered the global debate over artificial intelligence with a warning that reads less like a routine Vatican statement and more like an alarm about the future direction of human civilisation.
In his first major encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, the Pope warns that humanity risks building a “new Tower of Babel” through the unchecked rise of artificial intelligence and the growing concentration of technological power in the hands of governments and giant corporations.
The document, formally titled: “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” instantly places the Vatican at the centre of one of the defining arguments of this age, whether artificial intelligence will serve humanity or slowly diminish it.
“Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”
The line is among the most striking in the encyclical and captures the broader mood of the document.
Pope Leo is not writing about technology as a distant or abstract issue. He is writing about power, human dignity and what becomes of society when machines increasingly shape how people live and work.
For the Vatican, this is not simply another debate about innovation. It is a moral and civilisational question.
The encyclical arrives at a moment when artificial intelligence is spreading into nearly every part of modern life. Governments are pouring billions into AI development. Technology companies are racing to dominate the field. Militaries are adapting the technology for warfare. Entire industries are already being reshaped by systems capable of performing tasks once thought to belong only to human beings.
Against that backdrop, Pope Leo’s intervention feels significant not only because of what he says, but because of who is saying it.
Encyclicals are among the Catholic Church’s most authoritative teaching documents. They are traditionally reserved for major moral or social questions. By devoting his first major encyclical to artificial intelligence, Pope Leo is signalling that the Vatican views AI as one of the great defining issues of modern life, much like industrialisation and war shaped earlier generations.
The document also reflects a growing unease far beyond religious circles about the speed with which artificial intelligence is advancing and the lack of global agreement on how it should be controlled.
One of Pope Leo’s strongest arguments is that technology is never truly neutral.
That directly challenges a long-standing assumption within parts of the technology industry that innovation itself is morally neutral and that responsibility lies only with users.
“Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.”
The statement cuts to the heart of the encyclical. Artificial intelligence, the Pope argues, will inevitably reflect the values and interests of the people shaping it. If those values are driven mainly by profit or political power, then AI systems may deepen inequality and weaken human freedom rather than improve society.
Underlying much of the encyclical is a deeper criticism of an economic culture the Pope suggests is increasingly driven by what he describes as the “idolatry of profit”. The concern is not only that artificial intelligence may become too powerful, but that systems built mainly around commercial dominance and competition may gradually push human dignity to the margins.
Without mentioning specific firms, the document repeatedly raises concern about the concentration of technological influence among a small number of powerful corporations.
At several points, the encyclical reads almost like a warning about the rise of a new digital order in which information, communication and public behaviour are increasingly shaped by opaque systems operating beyond meaningful democratic oversight.
“When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight.”
That concern extends into politics, media and public life. Pope Leo warns about manipulation, surveillance and misinformation in a world where algorithms increasingly determine what people see and believe.
The anxieties underlying the encyclical are no longer theoretical. Artificial intelligence is rapidly moving beyond chatbots and software into surveillance systems, autonomous weapons and increasingly human-like machines capable of navigating physical spaces and performing tasks once reserved for people.
The Pope’s warning appears rooted in a fear that technological capability is advancing far faster than humanity’s moral readiness for it.
There is also a deep anxiety in the document about labour and the value of human work.
The Pope draws a deliberate connection with the Industrial Revolution and the upheaval that transformed workers’ lives in the nineteenth century.
The symbolism is difficult to miss. The encyclical was signed on the anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the landmark Vatican document that defended labour rights during the rise of industrial capitalism.
The message appears clear. Pope Leo sees artificial intelligence as this generation’s defining social disruption.
He warns that workers risk becoming expendable in economic systems driven mainly by efficiency and automation. Yet the concern goes beyond jobs. The encyclical repeatedly pushes back against the idea that human beings should be valued mainly for productivity or economic usefulness.
The document becomes even more forceful when addressing warfare.
Pope Leo raises alarm about autonomous weapons and the growing role of AI in military operations. He warns against handing life and death decisions to machines and fears a future where violence becomes easier to carry out because societies are increasingly detached from its human consequences.
The warning mirrors wider concerns already being raised by scientists, diplomats and human rights groups as governments compete to develop more advanced AI-driven military systems.
