What Pope Leo XIV’s first AI encyclical reveals about Anthropic, human agency, and the future of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence has quickly become one of the defining ethical questions of our time. Governments are racing to regulate it, technology companies are competing to build increasingly powerful models, and society is struggling to determine who should ultimately be responsible for the decisions AI systems influence.
Against this backdrop, Pope Leo XIV released Magnifica Humanitas, the Catholic Church’s first encyclical dedicated entirely to Artificial Intelligence. The document immediately positioned itself as one of the most significant contributions to the global conversation on AI ethics, human dignity, and responsible AI governance.
Yet one remarkable detail has received surprisingly little attention.
During the official presentation of the encyclical at the Vatican, standing beside Pope Leo XIV was Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic—one of the world’s leading Artificial Intelligence companies and a global reference in AI safety research.
The symbolism was impossible to ignore.
Was this simply an invitation to dialogue between faith and technology? Or did it reveal something deeper about the relationship between moral authority and the companies building the future of AI?
That question led me down a much more interesting path.
There’s a 33-year-old Canadian who just received the most valuable PR moment in the history of Artificial Intelligence
And he got it for free.
His name is Christopher Olah.
Yesterday, he stood on stage inside the Vatican, next to Pope Leo XIV.
For context, Olah is a co-founder of Anthropic, one of the most valuable AI companies in the world, reportedly valued at nearly $900 billion. Together with Pope Leo XIV, he participated in the public presentation of Magnifica Humanitas, the first papal encyclical in history dedicated entirely to Artificial Intelligence.
The title translates from Latin as Magnificent Humanity.
Its release came exactly 135 years after Pope Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum, the landmark encyclical that transformed the Catholic Church’s position on the Industrial Revolution, workers’ rights, and economic justice.
But May 25, 2026 marked two historic firsts.
For the first time in modern history, a Pope personally introduced an encyclical to the world. Traditionally, that responsibility falls to senior cardinals. Instead, Pope Leo XIV walked into the Synod Hall himself.
He was joined by Cardinal Víctor Fernández, Cardinal Michael Czerny, theologian Anna Rowlands of Durham University—and Christopher Olah.
According to a Vatican source quoted by the National Catholic Reporter,
“We don’t usually invite someone from the outside.”
This time, they did.
That raises an obvious question.
Did you notice the paradox?
The Pope unveiled a document arguing that technology is never neutral—a document calling humanity to safeguard the human person in the age of Artificial Intelligence—while standing beside one of the people helping build that very technology.
Imagine if Rerum Novarum, in 1891, had been introduced alongside Andrew Carnegie.
Would we have considered that ethically uncomplicated?
I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Isn’t there a conflict of interest here?
And if there is…
Why is almost nobody asking that question?
My latest book, Between You and AI, published by Wiley, explores one central question:
How do we preserve human agency in a world increasingly shaped by Artificial Intelligence?
Ironically, while reading Magnifica Humanitas, I realized Pope Leo XIV and I arrive at remarkably similar conclusions.
The interesting part is not where we agree.
It’s where an apparent contradiction emerges.
What Happened at the Vatican?
To understand why this moment matters, we need to travel back to 1891.
That was the year Pope Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum—Latin for Of New Things.
Imagine the world at that moment.
Factories were swallowing entire villages. Twelve-hour shifts were common. Children worked machines capable of maiming adults. Cities expanded faster than governments could regulate them. Two competing ideologies fought for the soul of the worker: unrestrained capitalism on one side and revolutionary socialism on the other.
For decades, the Catholic Church had remained largely silent while the Industrial Revolution fundamentally reshaped what it meant to be human.
Then Leo XIII broke that silence.
Rerum Novarum accomplished three extraordinary things.
First, it defended workers’ right to organize into unions—a radical position for its time.
Second, it defended private property against the socialist movements calling for its abolition.
Most importantly, however, it argued that human dignity comes before both capital and the State.
Neither factory owners nor political ideologies should determine the value of a human being.
That principle became the foundation of modern Catholic Social Teaching.
Every major papal document on labor, economics, and human dignity over the following 135 years can be traced back to Rerum Novarum—from Quadragesimo Anno in 1931 to Centesimus Annus in 1991.
Now, in 2026, another Pope named Leo has returned to the same fundamental question.
Only the machine has changed.
In 1891, the defining technology was the steam engine.
In 2026, it is the large language model.
The question, however, remains remarkably similar:
What does it mean to remain fully human when technology begins reorganizing the way we work, think, and make decisions?
The AI Encyclical: Why Magnifica Humanitas Matters
Fast forward to May 25, 2026.
The Vatican released Magnifica Humanitas, the first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate—and the first in the history of the Catholic Church devoted entirely to Artificial Intelligence.
Its subtitle says everything:
“On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.”
At more than 42,000 words across five chapters, the document isn’t merely a theological reflection on AI. It is a philosophical framework for understanding how humanity should respond to one of the most transformative technologies ever created.
At the center of the encyclical lies a surprisingly powerful metaphor.
Humanity, Pope Leo XIV argues, faces a choice.
We can build another Tower of Babel.
Or we can build a city where God and humanity dwell together.
At first glance, it sounds like biblical symbolism.
In reality, it is one of the sharpest observations I’ve read about Artificial Intelligence.
The Tower of Babel and Artificial Intelligence
The encyclical defines Babel through three characteristics:
- the idolatry of profit;
- the pursuit of uniformity;
- and what may be its most haunting phrase:
“The reduction of human mystery to data.”
That sentence stayed with me long after I finished reading.
Because it’s doing far more work than it appears.
To understand it, we have to return to the original story in Genesis.
After the Flood, humanity decides to build a tower reaching the heavens.
Not because they are curious.
Because they are ambitious.
Genesis tells us they wanted to “make a name for themselves.”
In other words, they sought transcendence without dependence.
They wanted to become like God—without God.
What’s fascinating is that the punishment wasn’t destruction.
God didn’t send fire.
He didn’t send another flood.
Instead, He confused their language.
The tower didn’t collapse because its architecture failed.
It collapsed because its builders could no longer understand one another.
Communication broke down.
Shared purpose disappeared.
Civilization fractured.
Now place that story beside today’s conversation about Artificial Intelligence.
Pope Leo XIV is not arguing that AI itself is the new Tower of Babel.
That would be simplistic.
His point is considerably more subtle.
Artificial Intelligence can become the latest expression of the Babel impulse—our recurring temptation to believe that every human limitation can be engineered away.
The temptation to optimize away vulnerability.
To automate away judgment.
To eliminate uncertainty.
To replace diversity with standardization.
To believe that every meaningful human decision can ultimately become a computational problem.
That is Babel.
Not a building.
A mindset.
Think about where we already see it happening.
A marketing team in São Paulo generates campaigns using the same large language model as another team in Stockholm.
Recruiters in Lagos and Lisbon screen candidates using identical AI systems trained on similar datasets.
Executives on opposite sides of the planet ask the same models the same questions—and receive nearly identical strategic recommendations.
Little by little, originality gives way to optimization.
Difference gives way to efficiency.
Human judgment begins to converge toward algorithmic consensus.
This isn’t merely technological progress.
It’s cultural flattening.
The danger isn’t that Artificial Intelligence becomes more intelligent than we are.
The danger is that human beings gradually become more alike because we increasingly think through the same machines.
That’s a very different concern.
And a much deeper one.
The brilliance of Pope Leo XIV’s argument is that he reframes the punishment of Babel.
In Genesis, diversity of language was imposed by God.
In the age of Artificial Intelligence, uniformity may become something we voluntarily choose.
No divine intervention is required.
If billions of people rely on the same AI models, trained on the same datasets, optimized toward the same objectives, we risk surrendering the very diversity that makes human civilization resilient.
We don’t lose our uniqueness because someone takes it from us.
We lose it because convenience persuades us to hand it over.
That, to me, is one of the most original contributions Magnifica Humanitas makes to the debate on AI ethics.
The Alternative: A City, Not a Tower
Pope Leo XIV doesn’t simply criticize Artificial Intelligence.
He offers an alternative vision.
Instead of another tower, he imagines a city.
That distinction matters.
A tower is vertical.
A city is horizontal.
A tower centralizes power.
A city distributes it.
A tower demands uniformity.
A city thrives on difference.
Read through that lens, the encyclical isn’t asking whether AI is good or bad.
That’s the wrong question.
The real question is whether Artificial Intelligence helps expand human dignity—or quietly compresses it.
Whether AI strengthens our capacity for judgment—or gradually replaces it.
Whether it amplifies human agency—or dissolves it.
That is the real ethical challenge.
And on that point, I find myself in almost complete agreement with Pope Leo XIV.
Five Remarkable Overlaps Between Magnifica Humanitas and Between You and AI
As I read the encyclical, I was struck by how closely its central ideas echoed Chapter 10 of my latest book, Between You and AI—the chapter devoted entirely to Agency.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting Pope Leo XIV copied my work.
God forbid.
What surprised me was something much more interesting.
Despite approaching the problem from entirely different traditions—one theological, the other grounded in leadership and organizational behavior—we arrived at remarkably similar conclusions about what Artificial Intelligence demands from human beings.
Five, in particular, stood out.
1. The greatest danger isn’t AI—it’s decision laundering.
One of the encyclical’s strongest warnings concerns people who gradually stop making decisions and begin merely forwarding machine outputs.
This matters especially when AI systems influence hiring, credit approvals, medical recommendations, education, or reputation.
Algorithms don’t understand compassion.
They don’t understand forgiveness.
They don’t recognize the possibility that people can change.
Human beings do.
That’s why human-in-the-loop cannot become a ceremonial checkbox.
If humans remain legally responsible for AI-assisted decisions, they must also remain intellectually responsible.
2. Agency belongs to the builders as much as the users.
Pope Leo XIV makes another important point.
Those who design, finance, deploy, and profit from Artificial Intelligence carry moral responsibility.
Agency isn’t limited to the person writing prompts.
It extends to the person writing code.
It extends to investors.
It extends to executives.
It extends to everyone shaping the incentives behind AI systems.
Which makes Christopher Olah’s presence beside the Pope even more fascinating.
Not accidental.
Symbolic.
Is There a Conflict of Interest? Three Possible Readings
At this point, I found myself wrestling with an apparent contradiction.
If Pope Leo XIV argues that those who build Artificial Intelligence systems bear moral responsibility for their consequences, why would he choose to present that message while standing beside one of the industry’s most influential AI builders?
What’s happening here?
I see three possible interpretations.
Reading One: Anthropic Received an Extraordinary Ethical Endorsement
The first interpretation is the most obvious.
Anthropic received one of the most valuable public relations moments in the history of the AI industry.
Think about it.
Every major Artificial Intelligence company today is competing to be perceived as the responsible AI company.
Safety has become a competitive advantage.
Trust has become a brand.
Standing beside Pope Leo XIV during the launch of the Church’s first AI encyclical instantly reinforces that narrative.
Christopher Olah didn’t simply attend an event.
He participated in one of the most symbolically powerful moments in the history of AI ethics.
A Vatican endorsement—whether intentional or not—is an asset that no marketing budget could ever purchase.
It’s easy to see why some observers might conclude that Anthropic walked away with the most prestigious ethical seal imaginable.
It’s a compelling interpretation.
But I don’t think it’s the correct one.
Reading Two: The Vatican Wasn’t Endorsing Anthropic. It Was Choosing a Conversation Partner.
Now consider a different possibility.
Perhaps Pope Leo XIV wasn’t elevating Anthropic.
Perhaps he was deliberately engaging the part of the AI industry most willing to discuss safety, responsibility, and interpretability.
Notice who wasn’t on stage.
Not Sam Altman.
Not Elon Musk.
Not executives from Meta or Google.
Instead, the Vatican invited Christopher Olah—a researcher whose career has largely focused on understanding how AI systems actually think and behave.
That choice feels deliberate.
Rather than embracing the entire AI industry, the Vatican may have been signaling that if dialogue is going to happen, it will happen first with those who acknowledge that Artificial Intelligence raises profound ethical questions.
In other words, this wasn’t an endorsement.
It was a selection.
The Church wasn’t saying, “Anthropic is morally right.”
It may simply have been saying, “This is where the conversation begins.”
That interpretation is stronger.
But I still don’t think it goes far enough.
Reading Three: The Real Paradox Isn’t at the Vatican. It’s in Silicon Valley.
This is the interpretation I find most convincing.
Both previous explanations assume something that has never actually been true.
They assume the Church should be neutral.
But the Catholic Church has never claimed neutrality on moral questions.
Quite the opposite.
Every major encyclical exists precisely because the Church chooses to take a moral position.
Rerum Novarum wasn’t neutral between labor and capital.
Laudato Si’ wasn’t neutral on environmental responsibility.
Magnifica Humanitas isn’t neutral about Artificial Intelligence.
Nor should it be.
Expecting neutrality from the Pope is a category mistake.
His role is to articulate moral principles—not to remain above them.
Once we recognize that, something interesting happens.
The apparent contradiction disappears.
And another one comes into focus.
The Real Conflict Isn’t the Pope’s. It’s the AI Industry’s.
For years, leading Artificial Intelligence companies have described themselves as neutral technology providers.
The argument is familiar.
“We’re simply building the tools.”
“People decide how to use them.”
“Technology itself is neutral.”
It’s an attractive narrative.
It also happens to be increasingly difficult to defend.
Because every important decision in AI involves values.
Which data gets collected?
Which behaviors get rewarded?
Which risks are acceptable?
Which mistakes are tolerated?
Which voices become training data?
Which become statistical outliers?
Every one of those decisions reflects human judgment.
Artificial Intelligence does not emerge from a moral vacuum.
It reflects the priorities of the people who build it.
That is precisely why Pope Leo XIV insists throughout Magnifica Humanitas that technology is never neutral.
Not because machines possess morality.
But because their creators inevitably embed human values into the systems they design.
Once we accept that premise, the conversation changes entirely.
The important question is no longer whether the Pope compromised his neutrality.
The Church never claimed neutrality.
The more interesting question is why the AI industry continues to describe itself as morally neutral while simultaneously making decisions that shape employment, education, healthcare, finance, creativity, democracy, and increasingly, human identity itself.
That is the contradiction worth examining.
The Deeper Question: Who Is the Author?
This brings us to what I believe is the central message of Magnifica Humanitas.
It’s also the central argument of Chapter 10 of my book, Between You and AI.
Both ultimately ask the same question.
Who is the author of the decision?
Not who generated the output.
Not who suggested the answer.
Not who produced the prediction.
Who authored the decision?
That distinction matters more than ever.
Every technological revolution eventually arrives at this question.
During the Industrial Revolution, the debate was straightforward.
If a machine injured a worker, who was responsible?
The manufacturer?
The factory owner?
The worker?
The State?
Rerum Novarum answered that responsibility never disappears simply because technology is involved.
It may be distributed.
But it is never eliminated.
The digital revolution presented the same dilemma in a different form.
When social media algorithms amplified polarization or misinformation, technology companies often responded with a familiar refrain:
“We’re just a platform.”
History has shown how costly that answer became.
Polarization deepened.
Public trust eroded.
Mental health suffered.
Elections were affected.
Responsibility proved impossible to outsource.
Now Artificial Intelligence presents the same challenge once again.
Who is responsible when AI recommends denying a mortgage?
When it screens job applicants?
When it determines insurance premiums?
When it suggests layoffs?
When it influences judicial decisions?
The technology is new.
The ethical question isn’t.
Pope Leo XIV’s answer is remarkably consistent with the Church’s social teaching over the past 135 years.
Everyone involved shares responsibility.
Those who build.
Those who finance.
Those who regulate.
Those who deploy.
Those who ultimately decide.
No one escapes accountability simply because an algorithm was involved.
My Interpretation Is Slightly Different
This is where my perspective becomes more operational.
The encyclical distributes responsibility across society.
I agree.
But I would add one more layer.
Ultimately, responsibility arrives at a single place.
You.
The leader.
The manager.
The entrepreneur.
The physician.
The recruiter.
The teacher.
The citizen sitting in front of a screen.
Artificial Intelligence can draft the email.
Summarize the report.
Rank the candidates.
Recommend the strategy.
Predict the outcome.
Even estimate, with remarkable confidence, who should be promoted—or dismissed.
But it cannot become the author.
Only you can.
The moment we stop authoring our decisions and begin merely forwarding machine outputs, we surrender the very thing that makes us responsible moral agents.
And if that happens, we haven’t simply delegated work.
We’ve delegated part of our humanity.
Think about the last important decision you made at work in which Artificial Intelligence played a role.
Perhaps it involved hiring.
Perhaps writing.
Perhaps strategy.
Perhaps performance reviews.
Ask yourself one simple question.
Were you the author of that decision?
Or were you simply its messenger?
On a scale from zero to ten, how much of the final judgment was genuinely yours?
If you’re no longer certain where your thinking ends and the machine’s begins, you’ve arrived at the heart of Pope Leo XIV’s warning.
And, perhaps unintentionally, at the heart of what I have called Agency.
Conclusion: The Real Stage Isn’t the Vatican. It’s Your Screen
So, do I believe Pope Leo XIV created a conflict of interest by inviting Christopher Olah to the Vatican?
No.
In fact, I think he did something far more intelligent.
He forced two institutions that shape humanity’s future—the Catholic Church and the Artificial Intelligence industry—to acknowledge, in front of one another, that neither operates in a moral vacuum.
The Church has never claimed neutrality.
And perhaps it’s time the AI industry stopped pretending it has.
That, to me, is the real significance of Magnifica Humanitas.
The encyclical isn’t ultimately about Artificial Intelligence.
It’s about responsibility.
One hundred and thirty-five years ago, Pope Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum in response to the Industrial Revolution.
Factories were transforming labor.
Machines were reshaping society.
The central question was simple:
Who remains responsible when technology changes the way we work?
Today, Pope Leo XIV asks exactly the same question.
Only the machine has changed.
The steam engine has become the large language model.
The factory has become the algorithm.
The assembly line has become Artificial Intelligence.
But the ethical challenge remains remarkably familiar.
Who is responsible for the next decision?
Christopher Olah.
Pope Leo XIV.
You.
Three people connected by the same question.
Only one difference remains.
Their stage was the Vatican.
Yours is a screen.
And every time Artificial Intelligence helps you write an email, evaluate a candidate, prepare a presentation, approve a budget, diagnose a patient, or shape a strategy, the same question quietly returns.
Who is the author?
Because the future of Artificial Intelligence won’t be determined only by the people building the models.
It will also be determined by the millions of people deciding how much of their own judgment they are willing to surrender to them.
That may be the most important leadership question of the AI era.
Final Thought
The real danger of Artificial Intelligence isn’t that machines become more human.
It’s that humans slowly become more machine-like—outsourcing not only tasks, but judgment, responsibility, and ultimately agency.
Technology has always changed the way we work.
The real question has never been whether we should embrace it.
The real question is whether we remain fully human while doing so.
Want to continue exploring the impact of artificial intelligence, leadership, and the future of work? Discover my podcast Between You and AI | Leadership, Human Skills & the Future of Work.
Check out my book “Between You and AI,” published by Wiley — that’s where I unpack the whole framework of nine human skills for navigating this wave. And you can find me at andreaiorio.com for everything else: keynotes, content, conversations.
