Pope Leo XIV has created a Vatican study group on artificial intelligence, intensifying the Catholic Church’s engagement with one of the defining technologies of the age and setting the stage for his first encyclical on AI, human dignity, and peace. The move signals that Rome no longer sees AI as a niche scientific issue but as a moral and spiritual challenge that touches work, war, education, and the future of religious belief itself.
Why the Pope is acting now
The Vatican announced the new AI study group on May 13, saying Pope Leo XIV had decided to create an in‑house team because of the acceleration in AI’s use and “its potential effects on human beings and on humanity as a whole,” coupled with “the Church’s concern for the dignity of every human being.”
The timing is deliberate. The group is being set up as the Vatican prepares to release Leo’s first encyclical, a major teaching document expected to focus on artificial intelligence and to argue for an ethics‑based approach that keeps technology at the service of human persons and peace. Vatican officials noted that Leo signed the encyclical 135 years to the day after his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, dated Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), the landmark 1891 text on industrial‑era labor and social justice.
By echoing that anniversary, the Vatican is framing AI as a new kind of “social question” comparable to the upheavals of the industrial revolution, something that will reshape work, law, and daily life, and therefore demands a sustained moral response.
Inside the Vatican’s AI study group
The Vatican has given only broad outlines of how the new study group will function. According to reporting by the National Catholic Reporter and other outlets, it will be housed within the Roman Curia, drawing in experts from existing departments that deal with doctrine, culture, education, and communications.
The group’s mandate is to:
- Monitor developments in AI, particularly where they intersect with human rights, social inequalities, warfare, and digital culture.
- Advise the Pope and Vatican offices on pastoral and policy responses, including how AI affects evangelization, catechesis, and the Church’s social teaching.
- Coordinate Catholic participation in global AI forums and dialogues with governments, tech companies and other religious traditions.
The initiative builds on recent projects such as the International Observatory for Integral Intelligence, Ethics, and Public Value, a joint effort between the Pontifical University Antonianum in Rome and Mississippi State University, set up to study the ethical use of AI. Vatican News says Leo wants an “integral” approach that looks at AI not just as code or policy but as something that touches culture, spirituality and the meaning of being human.
A Church already deep into the AI debate
While the study group is new, the Vatican’s engagement with AI goes back several years. Under Pope Francis, the Holy See launched the Rome Call for AI Ethics in 2020, a document signed by tech firms including Microsoft and IBM, which called for AI guided by transparency, inclusion, accountability, impartiality, reliability, and privacy.
In January 2025, the Vatican’s doctrinal and cultural offices jointly released “Antiqua et Nova,” a 117‑paragraph note on “the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence.” The document described AI as a “gift of human creativity” that can serve the common good, but warned that it also risks deepening inequality, fueling manipulation and, in warfare, expanding “instruments of war well beyond the scope of human oversight” and triggering a destabilizing arms race.
Commentators at Word on Fire and EWTN say these texts reveal a consistent pattern: the Vatican insists AI must remain anthropocentric, centered on the human person, and treated not just as a technical or regulatory issue but as a spiritual and moral one.
Pope Leo himself has already spoken repeatedly about AI. In a 2025 message to an AI forum, he urged “builders of AI” to ensure their work “reflects justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life,” and reminded them that intelligence, human or artificial, must be oriented toward the common good. Vatican journalists describe his view as “balanced”: appreciative of AI’s potential, but sharply critical of “naive and unquestioning reliance on artificial intelligence as an omniscient ‘friend’.”
What worries the Vatican about AI
The Church’s concerns cluster around several themes.
1. Human dignity and labor.
Leo has warned that AI systems risk treating people as data points and workers as disposable. In interviews with Vatican News, ethicists argue that many AI deployments are “aimed not to help workers, but to replace them,” threatening social cohesion if left unchecked. Antiqua et Nova urges policymakers to ensure AI augments rather than undermines meaningful work.
2. Warfare and “killer robots.”
At a 2024 session with the G7, then‑Pope Francis brought papal authority to bear on autonomous weapons, calling for a ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems, “killer robots”, and insisting that decisions about the use of force must remain under direct human control. The new study group is expected to track AI in military contexts closely, as Vatican documents warn that AI‑driven warfare could outstrip human oversight and have “catastrophic consequences for human rights.”
3. Truth, misinformation, and the spiritual life.
The Vatican has highlighted risks from AI‑generated misinformation, deepfakes and systems that subtly manipulate opinion. Catholic ethicists warn that tools able to clone voices and faces, potentially even those of religious leaders, raise pastoral and sacramental questions. Pope Leo has called faces and voices “sacred,” stressing that any technology that distorts them for deception undermines personal dignity.
4. The nature of intelligence and the soul.
In Antiqua et Nova, the Vatican draws a sharp distinction between pattern‑recognition machines and the human capacity for reason, love, and moral discernment, rooted in being created “in the image of God.” The document warns that forms of knowledge detached from embodied, relational human intelligence, including certain AI systems, risk becoming a threat when they are treated as substitutes for human judgment.
How other faith voices are reading the moment
Beyond the Vatican, Catholic scholars see the study group as a sign that religion intends to be a serious interlocutor for governments and tech firms on AI.
Meghan Sullivan, a philosophy professor at the University of Notre Dame and director of its ethics institute, told reporters she believes the Catholic Church “is going to be the adult in the room” in policy debates about integrating AI into society. She predicts that Leo will be “one of the most forceful advocates for human dignity” in discussions that can otherwise get lost in technical jargon or corporate lobbying.
Analysts at Word on Fire argue that the Church offers something secular AI ethics often lacks: a thicker account of what a human being is for, drawing on both faith and reason. Where regulatory frameworks tend to talk about rights, transparency and safety, Vatican documents add language about the spiritual dimension of human life, the dangers of technological determinism and the need to resist narratives that portray technology as an autonomous force beyond moral evaluation.
What the study group could do next
For now, the AI study group exists mostly on paper, but several likely avenues of work are already visible. Vatican News and Catholic outlets expect it to:
- Feed into the upcoming encyclical, offering technical and ethical input and helping bishops’ conferences translate its teaching into local guidance for educators, employers, and digital ministries.
- Shape Catholic education, developing resources to help schools and seminaries teach AI literacy and ethics, so that priests and lay leaders can answer questions from parishioners who already live with AI in their phones, workplaces, and homes.
- Deepen interfaith and tech dialogues, building on the Rome Call for AI Ethics to convene Jews, Muslims, Protestants and secular ethicists alongside companies and regulators.
The group may also be asked to monitor how AI affects the Church itself, from automated translation of homilies and canon‑law research to the pastoral use of chatbots, and to draw lines about what kinds of “Catholic AI” tools are compatible with Church teaching.
Faith and code in the same room
In creating an AI study group, Pope Leo XIV is betting that theology and ethics can still play a meaningful role in shaping a technology often presented as inevitable. Vatican officials insist they are not trying to write software or compete with engineers, but to ask questions others may ignore: What kind of people does AI encourage us to become? Who benefits, and who is left behind? What happens when systems that don’t understand love, forgiveness or mercy start mediating our relationships and institutions?
The answers won’t come quickly. But by putting faith and code in the same room, the Vatican is signaling that, in the age of AI, religion will not only comment from the sidelines, it intends to help set the terms of the debate.
