First American Pope Leo Says AI Poses ‘New Challenges’ for Humanity – Decrypt

Chicago-born mathematician Robert Prevost, the Catholic Church’s newly elected pope, has singled out artificial intelligence as one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity.

In his inaugural address to the College of Cardinals on Saturday, the new Pope said the Church would act as a guide in response to “developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labour.”

Prevost’s statements on AI reaffirm the 1.4 billion-member religion’s commitment to engaging with the technology as it spurs concerns over its impact on the environment and human labor.

The new pontiff said his role continues his predecessor’s, which “addressed the social question in the context of the first great Industrial Revolution.”

His papal name, Pope Leo XIV, is in reference to Pope Leo XIII (Gioacchino Pecci), who led Roman Catholics until 1903.

Pecci engaged social challenges during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century through his landmark encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which addressed the duties of capital and labor, advocating the protection of workers, the right to private property, and the role of the state in ensuring social justice.

The Vatican has already begun leveraging artificial intelligence to digitize and index its vast Apostolic Archives, enabling researchers to access centuries of Church history more efficiently.

Officials say the technology will help preserve delicate manuscripts and assist scholars in identifying connections across texts that might otherwise remain buried.

The pope’s remarks on AI align with broader global concerns over its societal impact—a topic that has surfaced in multiple controversies in recent years.

Those AI ethics controversies range from deceptive academic experiments using AI personas on Reddit to generative AI tools for cheating in education and censorship practices by image-generation platforms such as Midjourney, which blocked political figures like China’s Xi Jinping.

These concerns are mirrored in Catholic thought, which frames AI through the twin principles of protecting human dignity and promoting the common good.

“The Vatican’s adoption of AI tools assists the Church’s mission by making evangelization and governance more efficient,” Dr. Lawrence S. Pedregosa, a theological ethicist and academic member of the Initiative for the Study of Asian Catholics, told Decrypt. “But this must be done through dialogue with political and technological leaders to ensure these technologies do not exacerbate inequality or undermine freedom and responsibility, especially in pastoral and sacramental contexts.”

He added that while AI can expand the Church’s capacity to reach communities, “it should never replace the gift of physical presence, lest we risk living in communities founded on simulacra.”

Prevost was relatively unknown across prediction markets, which, in recent weeks, had centered on who would become the next pope. His election defied expectations.

On the eve of Prevost’s appointment, President Donald Trump congratulated the new pontiff, saying it was “an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope.”

The Vatican on AI

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the previous pope known as Francis, described artificial intelligence in 2023 as “the highest-stakes gamble of our future” and urged that it be developed to “serve humanity’s best potential.”

In the same year, the Vatican launched the “Rome Call for AI Ethics,” an industry collaboration signed by major tech firms such as Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco.

Amid growing geopolitical conflicts, Bergoglio denounced the use of AI in war: “No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being.”

In January, the Vatican published Antiqua Nova, a document on its official position on AI, under Bergoglio’s guidance.

“AI’s advanced features give it sophisticated abilities to perform tasks, but not the ability to think,” the document reads. “As AI becomes more powerful, there is an associated risk that human labor may lose its value in the economic realm.”

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

Editor’s note: Adds comment from Pedregosa