Pope Leo XIV drew global attention to the growing ethical and societal challenges posed by artificial intelligence as he began his papacy this month.
His message highlights an increasing effort by religious leaders to shape the trajectory of a technology both brimming with potential and shadowed by existential concerns.
In a striking alignment of faith and future, Leo XIV’s remarks were cited by leading Protestant Evangelicals in the United States, who issued an open letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
The letter advocates for a “responsibly accelerating AI revolution,” while cautioning against “potential peril.”
Speaking to the cardinals on May 10, Leo XIV revealed that his chosen papal name pays homage to Leo XIII, whose tenure spanned from 1878 to 1903.
That earlier pope had addressed the societal upheavals of the first major industrial revolution.
In a parallel gesture, Leo XIV declared that the Church must now respond to the new technological upheaval.
“Today, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence,” the pope said.
The Evangelical letter echoes that concern, championing AI’s potential to “help cure diseases and solve practical problems,” while also warning against the creation of “autonomous smarter-than-human machines that nobody knows how to control”, a sentiment familiar to those following Silicon Valley’s “AI doomer” narratives.
A New Era for Humanity
The Church’s growing focus on AI is not new. Paolo Benanti, a 51-year-old Franciscan priest and engineering PhD, has long advised the Vatican and the Italian government on ethical issues surrounding technology.
According to him, the late Pope Francis had already begun to weave AI into broader moral reflections on environmental sustainability and societal change.
Francis, in a January speech, pointed to the “concerns about intellectual property rights, the job security of millions of people, the need to respect privacy and protect the environment” as well as the threat of misinformation.
Benanti recalled Francis’s landmark 2015 statement that “we are not living an epoch of change so much as an epochal change,” a phrase that has come to define the Church’s stance on emerging technologies.
He emphasized that the Vatican’s approach is not to obstruct innovation.
“Look at the huge improvement that AI can produce,” Benanti said, citing how AI can aid in diagnosing illnesses in areas where doctors are scarce.
But he warned of the dual-edged nature of technological tools: “AI could be a wonderful tool but could be weaponised… this is something that could happen with every kind of technology, from the hammer… up to nuclear power.”
Upholding Human Dignity Through ‘Algor-Ethics’
Francis had previously called for the creation of a new ethical framework, “algor-ethics,” a fusion of “algorithm” and “ethics”, to govern artificial intelligence. Central to this framework is the Church’s emphasis on human dignity.
Benanti underscored that any system that fails to acknowledge the uniqueness of the individual poses a moral risk.
For example, he imagined an AI system that determines asylum claims based on data correlations, rather than each applicant’s personal narrative.
Such scenarios evoke dark historical parallels. “One piece of data” on someone’s Jewish identity during the Holocaust could determine their fate, Benanti reminded.
In the evolving job market, he advocates for “human-compatible AI innovation” that ensures people remain essential contributors. Rather than merely filling in gaps around machine capabilities, humans should “remain in a position to produce value.”
Faith in the Face of Godlike Machines
In a 2023 speech, Pope Francis warned of the ancient temptation “to become like God without God,” cautioning that even highly sophisticated AI tools intended to support human thinking could be misused.
Reverend Johnnie Moore, President of the US-based Congress of Christian Leaders and a key signatory of the open letter, shares this concern.
“It’s very perilous when individuals assume for themselves godlike powers, to make decisions for the rest of us,” he said.
Moore argues that spiritual wisdom accumulated over centuries should inform the way forward.
Rather than leaving the future solely in the hands of technologists, society should “go to the well” of religious insight for guidance.
While Pope Leo XIV called for protecting “human dignity, justice and labour” in light of AI’s emergence, the Evangelical leaders took an even starker tone.
Citing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s 2015 warning that “AI will most likely lead to the end of the world — but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies,” Moore emphasized the urgent need for safeguards.
“The current risk equation is just way too high to be tolerable,” Moore said. “We have to reduce the risk to human beings in this process.”
