Pope Leo XIV this week issued his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, in which he called for the limitation and control of artificial intelligence (AI) , which the Pope says threatens to normalize an anti-human vision, by concentrating immense digital power in the hands of a few private actors.  The Pope warns that AI represents “the industrial revolution of the modern age,” and poses challenges to human dignity, justice, and labor.

Dire warnings about the dangers of newfangled technology are nothing new.  All new technologies are met with fear by prophets of doom.  There were those who denounced those noisy, smelly horseless carriages as works of the Devil, which would put buggy whip manufacturers and horseshoeing businesses out of work.

I entitled this piece, Pope Luddite for that reason.  The Luddites were members of a 19th Century movement by textile workers who protested the use of automated machinery by the industry.  They have come to symbolize those who resist any technological advancement.

Some say that Pope Leo’s warning is more powerful because it comes from an American Pope.  Let’s put that argument to rest.  He may have been born in Chicago, but Pope Leo is more South American than North, having taken Peruvian citizenship when he was assigned to that country.  The Pope’s message isn’t coming from an American point of view, so much as a Progressive one.  This is unsurprising.

For those who think Popes only recently have begun spouting Progressive dogma, think again.  Pope Leo’s warning that AI is a modern day industrial revolution wasn’t original.  In fact, it is reminiscent of an encyclical of Leo XIV’s namesake, Leo XIII, who in 1891 issued Rerum Novarum, which warned that the industrial revolution was exploiting workers, denounced the concentration of wealth, and sought to improve living and working conditions for laborers.  Like Leo XIV’s  pronouncement, Leo XIII warned that new technology would cost workers their jobs.  Indeed, Leo XIV says that his choice of the papal name “Leo” was influenced by this 1891 encyclical.

The difference is that Leo XIII was advocating for the 19th Century entrepreneurs to establish now familiar social programs and advancements such as wage and hour laws, worker safety laws, and the protection of trade unions, while at the same time denouncing socialism and communism.  Leo XIV seems to be a dedicated socialist, bent on using AI technology to control State action.

At the heart of Leo’s argument is the notion that AI needs to be disarmed, and turned from an instrument of domination and death, to the service of the common good.  Leo says “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.”  He worries that AI makes war more feasible, and less subject to human control.

On one level, the Pope’s pronouncement may be seen as part of the ongoing dispute between he’s had with President Trump.  When he released his encyclical, Pope Leo had at his side Chris Olah, co-founder of the AI firm Anthropic.  Olah supports AI safety, a cause with which I cannot disagree.  But there’s more.

Anthropic is in an ongoing dispute with the Trump Administration.  Its AI program, Claude, is used by a number of government agencies, including defense agencies.  Because Anthropic seeks to limit the uses to which its technology may be put, such as being used to select and analyze military targets, the Trump Administration labeled it a supply chain threat to national security.  In essence, by controlling the permitted uses of AI, Anthropic or other tech companies could control the conduct of nation States.

Olah’s heart is in the right place, noting that AI companies have incentives that go against doing the right thing: commercial pressure, competition, pride and ambition.  He said there must be people outside those incentives, such as church leaders, who are willing to be thoughtful critics.

For his part, Pope Leo is calling for regulation of AI, to keep the technology from dehumanizing society.  He sees the challenge of AI about its design and about who gets to make choices as to its use.  I’m certainly not in favor of runaway AI programs which risk replacing human decision making with cold digital calculations.  People need to control the machines, not the other way around.  But who will be that guiding hand?

Magnifica Humanitas may be Pope Leo’s job application, but is he the best candidate?  Understand, I’m not bashing Pope Leo.  I think he’s striving for a more just and peaceful world, and that is a worthy goal.  However, the Pope, any Pope, isn’t merely some devout ascetic conscience of humanity, like the Dalai Lama.  He himself is a Chief of State, and the CEO of the conglomerate known as the Holy See.

The Pope may speak out against the dangers of commercialism and capitalism, but he’s got his own business interests to look after.  He has his own bank, the Vatican Bank, and the Holy See owns the Banco di Roma.  It has gold reserves, owns some 5,000 properties, making it a huge real estate company, it owns two insurance companies, and holds positions in Black Rock, J.P. Morgan, GE, IBM, and Bethlehem Steel.  Yet I’ve never heard the Pope lecture these companies about aiding in weapons production.

Despite the fact that the Pope regularly has audiences with tech billionaires, who come to Rome to kiss his ring, and pledge to advance Greenhouse Gas Emissions programs, the Vatican invests in Gulf Oil, and its ownership of a natural gas company, Italgas, may make its focus on Greenhouse Gas emissions seem a tad hypocritical.

Moreover, although the Vatican takes pains to criticize Western industrialists over pollution, CO2 emissions, and the like, it focuses little effort on the true despoilers of the environment in China, Russia, and India.  This may be due to the lack of Catholics in those places, but that’s the point.

Even if the Holy See could influence AI use, limiting it to peaceful uses which advance the health and safety of mankind in the West, it hasn’t a prayer of keeping the Chinese and others from making aggressive, warlike use of AI.

Leo’s encyclical condemns the servitude created by the technological revolution, including laborers in rare-earth element mines.  I guess he means in China, where most of these elements are being mined, but he doesn’t specify.  It also decries young people being exploited by online criminal networks.

No one is for that, of course, but he shouldn’t blame these problems on the fact that the technology exists.  Any technology or institution may be perverted for criminal purposes.  Even the Church, which is trying to extricate itself from the devastation sown by decades of sexual abuse of minors by its priests.  The San Diego Archdiocese had to file for bankruptcy protection due to judgments from abused victims.  These things didn’t happen because the Church exists, but because its stewards failed to prevent it.

I suppose we can agree that, regardless of whether he can bring about the regulation and limitation of AI that he advocates for, the Pope said what needed to be said.  Far be it from me to question a Pope’s motives, but the AI warnings in this encyclical may be as much about protecting a healthy bottom line as about protecting humanity.

The Holy See gets much of its revenue from a donation program called Peter’s Pence.  And we’re not talking about just pence.  The program brings in over $60 million a year, but donations have been going down of late.  Pope Leo XIII’s prediction that the industrial revolution would cost jobs, making the poor workers even poorer, turned out not to be true.  The Industrial Revolution led to higher wages, the emergence of the middle class, and vastly greater giving to the Church.

Leo XIV’s warning that AI will cost jobs mimics a common theme these days, but there’s no telling whether Leo XIV will be just as wrong about that as was Leo XIII.  I can understand Leo XIV’s concern, however.  People contribute to Peter’s Pence, computers and robots do not.  Food for thought.