Pope Leo XIV has spent his papacy treating AI as a moral question rather than a technical one, and his message to Rome’s AI4Peace conference this week kept to that script.
In a statement read aloud on 21 September by Rev. Andrea Ciucci, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, at the Pontifical Lateran University, the Pope said: “In a world marked by conflict and division, the development of artificial intelligence calls for a vision inspired by wisdom and charity, so that technological progress may serve the dignity of every person and strengthen the bonds that unite the human family.”
Economist Jeffrey Sachs and Rome council president Svetlana Celli were among the conference’s speakers.
It’s the same register MRKT3.0 covered when Pope Leo XIV made AI the defining theme of his papacy, releasing the 40,000-word encyclical Magnifica Humanitas in May and warning of AI-driven “economic colonialism” in an August address to Catholic legislators.
In August he was talking about power. Algorithms that decide who is seen, poorer nations locked out of the tools, people reduced to “data and simulations.” Today he is talking about division. The risk is not only who gets shut out, but that AI sorts people into opposing camps instead of connecting them.
The Pope’s main points haven’t changed. He still puts charity ahead of domination, and still asks for rules that keep the technology from running ahead of human dignity.
Nothing here commits any government or company to anything. But a pope who has now made several major AI interventions in a few months is building a record worth tracking.
Author: Grace Sharp
See Also:
Why Does the AI Industry Fear Pope Leo XIV?
Will AI Replace Religion? Or Quietly Become One?
King Charles Will Host AI Bosses This Week as Threat Warnings Mount
