New Things, New Questions: Pope Leo XIV and the AI Revolution
Part Two: A Defining Issue of Our Time

Matthew Neugebauer

Thursday, August 21, 2025

Digital art of a human head facing a robotic head.

New Things, New Questions: Pope Leo XIV and the AI Revolution

Part Two: A Defining Issue of Our Time

Pope Leo XIV hopes to apply the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching to the concerns and possibilities raised by the newly developed power of artificial intelligence. When he explained the choice of his name, he said that he was inspired by Leo XIII and his encyclical Rerum Novarum, which began the Social Teaching tradition by reflecting on the social and economic issues of the late-19th-century industrial revolution.In Part One of this series, I suggested that Pope Leo might chart a moderate path that encourages the development of AI for the betterment of humanity, while warning us of its threats to human dignity.

What form might his ethical reflections and diplomatic action on AI take? Pope Francis' engagement with the issue through homilies and addresses was substantial, and reminded us that it was becoming an important issue. However, as I also mentioned in Part One, he was content to let the conversation play out mainly through his Curia: Antiqua et nova was published by the (very important) Dicasteries for the Doctrine of the Faith and for Culture and Education. The Rome Call is an important diplomatic initiative with the Italian government and other signatories, and Francis rightly brought it to the attention of the G7. However, it is spearheaded by the Pontifical Academy for Life, which is mainly focused on research and education. While the Academy serves a vital role, a “full court press” on the issue will likely come from the pope’s chief diplomatic arm, the Section for Relations with States and International Organizations of the Secretariat of State.

How about an encyclical on AI?

It seems highly likely that Pope Leo XIV will publish a social encyclical with a large section reflecting on AI, if not a whole document devoted to it (scroll to the 20-minute mark of this podcast for more details). So, what are papal encyclicals specifically, and what role do they play in the Church’s discernment of faith and morals?

Pope Pius XII defined encyclicals as “official documents” through which popes “purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute” (Humani Generis #20, emphasis added). These matters include the values, purposes, and goals of social and political life, hence the tradition of social encyclicals begun by Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum. Francis determined that the time was ripe to publish Laudato Si’ in 2015 and Fratelli Tutti in 2020 because climate change and global conflict are clear and demonstrable threats to human flourishing. He “purposely [passed] judgement,” insisting that our response to these threats requires a conversion of hearts, minds, and policies.

Similarly, St. Paul VI wrote Populorum Progressio in 1967 to authoritatively assert that economic justice and integral human development are required to build a lasting peace. He was especially concerned about the many new countries in sub-saharan Africa and southeast Asia that had recently gained their independence from European empires, a process called “postcolonialism.” (see #76-77, the section entitled “Development, the New Name for Peace”).

Social encyclicals are also ways for popes to draw attention to major issues and trends of their time, faithful to Vatican II’s call that “in every age, the Church carries the responsibility of reading the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel…” (Gaudium et Spes #4, Flannery translation). Again, Paul VI used Populorum Progressio to shine a spotlight on the postcolonial wave of the previous few decades. In Humanae Vitae the following year, he addressed the sexual revolution and changing attitudes to family life and gender dynamics. Climate change and its impact on energy policy continues to be such a pressing issue that Francis followed up Laudato Si’ with the strongly-worded Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum in 2023. As I described in my standalone article, Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum alerted people to the rapid and often detrimental changes brought on by the industrial revolution, especially the large, heavy factories and even larger cities that were sweeping Europe at the end of the 19th century.

Pope Francis may not have issued an encyclical on AI because the technology, and human experience with it, were still too new and evolving that the matter was still “under dispute.” Pope Leo XIV may well decide that this is no longer the case, that the time is now ripe for him to “purposely pass judgment” on the challenges of AI “for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labour.”

By choosing to be named after Pope Leo XIII, Leo XIV, is already calling us to take both the challenges and promises of this new industrial revolution with the utmost seriousness. I’ll go into some prominent upsides and downsides of the technology in Parts Three and Four. More importantly, he is alerting us to the fact that it is rapidly becoming a defining issue of our time. As far back as 2020 (an eon in technological development) Pope Francis stated that this development “is at the very heart of the epochal change we are experiencing.”

Digital innovation touches every aspect of our lives, both personal and social. It affects our way of understanding the world and ourselves. It is increasingly present in human activity and even in human decisions, and is thus altering the way we think and act. Decisions, even the most important decisions, as for example in the medical, economic, or social fields, are now the result of human will and a series of algorithmic inputs.

Popes such as Leo XIII and throughout the 20th- and 21st-centuries have shone their brightest when offering calm, confident leadership on "era-defining" issues. Leo XIV, in naming the challenges of AI “for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labour” has surely picked up the baton. In Part Three, I'll go into what some of these challenges might be.