The Catholic Church is now formally engaging with artificial intelligence policy. Pope Leo XIV, in his first public address, identified AI as one of the central challenges of his papacy, framing it as a threat to human dignity comparable to the industrial revolution's exploitation of labor. This is not a pastoral aside. The Vatican is positioning itself as a moral counterweight to Silicon Valley on questions of algorithmic power, surveillance, and what it means to be human.
That framing is worth taking seriously for structural reasons, not theological ones. The Church operates in 193 countries, runs the world's largest non-governmental school and hospital network, and has spent two centuries developing doctrine on labor, capital, and human rights. When it says AI concentrates power dangerously, it is speaking to a constituency of 1.4 billion people that no AI ethics board, EU regulation, or Senate hearing can reach.
The original piece digs into which specific Vatican thinkers are shaping this position, how Leo XIV's background differs from Francis on technology, and whether the Church's track record on institutional reform gives its AI warnings any operational weight. The gap between the sermon and the policy is where this gets interesting.
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