The Audacious AI Agenda of Pope Leo XIV

I n one of his first addresses to the College of Cardinals that elected him, Pope Leo XIV explained that he chose the regnal name “Leo” as a nod to Leo XIII, who governed at the turn of the 20th century. Leo XIII kicked off the modern era of Catholic social teaching with the 1891 document Rerum Novarum, one of the first Catholic “social” encyclicals that dealt with the tremendous moral, political, economic, and human challenges posed by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of socialism.

Leo XIV views the current challenges posed by AI as analogous to those his predecessor faced 134 years ago. “In our own day,” our new Pope declared in one of his first public addresses, “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 that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour.”

Cardinal Fernando Chomalí, the Archbishop of Santiago, Chile, elaborated on the new Pope’s vision by sharing what Leo XIV had told him the evening after the election: “He told me he is very concerned about the cultural shifts we are living through, a Copernican revolution really — artificial intelligence, robotics, human relationships. . . . There is a revolution happening, and it must be addressed seriously. The Church can contribute through its moral authority and also its academic strength.”

This proposed papal project could represent a massive shift away from the internal disputes that preoccupied Francis’ pontificate. If Leo XIV can apply the treasures of the Catholic Church’s “moral authority and academic strength” to the profound challenges AI presents for labor, bioethics, and more, it will demonstrate a Catholic Church that is bold, vital, and relevant, with a profound wisdom to share with the world.

For a papacy to address such external questions would be refreshing, as so much of the Francis pontificate was focused ad intra. Certainly, Pope Francis’s programmatic contribution to the church’s magisterium — the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium — contained a number of important principles for promoting the church’s missionary and evangelistic efforts. Pope Leo XIV has cited these very positively. But Francis’s desire for evangelism was overshadowed in popular perception by the debates he allowed to erupt over questions long thought to be settled matters of church doctrine or discipline.

Francis’s reign was marked by internal dispute after internal dispute that seized far more headlines than any outward evangelism did. Will the church give remarried divorcees Holy Communion (controverted from 2014 to 2016)? Will it allow optional clerical celibacy (2019)? Will it ordain women to the diaconate (2021–24)? Will it allow priests to celebrate the older, traditional form of the Mass in Latin (2021–23)? Will it bless the union of gay couples (2021, and then 2023–24)?

Pope Francis convened recurring synods — gatherings of bishops and some laity from around the world for discussion, consultation, and teaching — which became the chief platforms for this relitigation of the church’s internal teaching and praxis. The height (or apogee) of the church’s inward focus under Francis was the Synod on Synodality itself. The synod’s process stretched from 2021 to 2024 at the local, continental, and international levels, and was bookended by two massive summits in Rome. It was a synod about what synods were supposed to be and do as a part of the church’s life, but the focus of the sprawling endeavor remained unclear, often shifting away from ecclesiology to such disparate topics as climate change and sexual ethics.

Nonetheless, I do not think a “synodal” approach to church governance — about which Leo XIV has spoken positively — must be a navel-gazing project. If the church under Leo XIV could convene a synod or other consultative body that fully leveraged the church’s “moral authority and academic strength,” calling together the smartest Catholic thinkers in the areas of moral theology, economics, law, bioethics, technology, and other disciplines, to guide the pope for a program of teaching that deeply engages with AI’s potential impact on the global order, it would be a tremendous service to the church and the world. Such a move would show a profound confidence in the church’s ability to engage with the culture and better it.

Leo XIV specifically mentioned the impact of AI on labor, and this is perhaps one of the foremost areas where the church can apply her wisdom. A Goldman Sachs report from 2023 estimated that generative AI could result in the loss of 300 million jobs worldwide to automation. Given that the World Bank estimates that the global workforce consists of approximately 3.69 billion people, AI might displace over 8 percent of the world’s workers.

As a 2,000-year-old institution, this isn’t the first time the Catholic Church has encountered a technological revolution that eliminated a lot of jobs. The treasury of the church’s social teaching can be applied today to offer wise guidance to policymakers struggling to understand what AI will mean for workers and labor worldwide.

The idea of technology replacing human beings in communications and social relations seems to be a specific question of interest to Pope Leo XIV. In America, teen depression and suicide sharply increased in 2012, when smartphone ownership and social media usage became near-universal. The church can serve as a credible witness against the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, who are recommending AI “friends” to fill in the loneliness gap so many people experience.

While Pope Leo did not mention this arena specifically, I desperately hope that the potential impact of AI on biotechnologies will be a focus of his teaching. The New York Times wrote about how scientists are looking to use AI for purposes of gene-editing using CRISPR technology. IVF is gaining greater headway worldwide, with Donald Trump looking to promote the technology in the United States, and other countries are already employing IVF for a staggering percentage of all national births. In Spain, 12 percent of births utilize IVF. Employing AI with technologies like CRISPR gene-editing to create “idealized” IVF-produced human beings (and discarding tens of thousands of embryos who are not so perfected) could lead to a dramatic, eugenic commodification of human life, where human beings become products.

As the head of the largest Christian body in the world, nobody is better positioned to offer the world moral guidance on the cusp of this profound revolution. Leo XIV will need lionlike courage, media savvy, and mission-focus to give the church the kind of moral global auctoritas it has not possessed since, arguably, the pontificate of John Paul II. I pray for him, that he is up to the challenge.