By Jared Perlo
Publication Date: 2026-05-24 12:00:00
Pope Leo
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The pope, who has been vocal about AI’s potential to interfere with human values, will be joined in Vatican City by leading Catholic figures and Chris Olah, a co-founder of AI company Anthropic.
The document will be Leo’s first encyclical, a special papal letter sent to all bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. The encyclical, titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” comes amid growing backlash over the impact of AI on the environment, society and education.
“We are witnessing an eclipse of the sense of what it means to be human,” Leo said Friday at a Vatican conference on AI, highlighting “the rampant promotion and implementation of technology at the expense of human dignity and the harm that occurs when chatbots and other technologies exploit our needs….”