Camille Naredo

Pope Leo XIV addresses the crowd from a window of the apostolic palace overlooking St. Peter's Square during the Angelus prayer in The Vatican on March 8, 2026. Tiziana Fabi, AFP

Pope Leo XIV addresses the crowd from a window of the apostolic palace overlooking St. Peter's Square during the Angelus prayer in The Vatican on March 8, 2026. (Photo by TIZIANA FABI / AFP)

Article (news)

Pope Leo

<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779704183013AFP__20260308__A2EG2YD__v2__MidRes__VaticanReligionPopeAngelus.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" alt="Pope Leo XIV addresses the crowd from a window of the apostolic palace overlooking St. Peter&#x27;s Square during the Angelus prayer in The Vatican on March 8, 2026. Tiziana Fabi, AFP" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">Pope Leo XIV addresses the crowd from a window of the apostolic palace overlooking St. Peter&#x27;s Square during the Angelus prayer in The Vatican on March 8, 2026. <em>Tiziana Fabi, AFP</em></span></span></span></div><p>VATICAN CITY, Holy See (<strong>UPDATED</strong>) -- Pope Leo XIV called Monday for the &quot;disarming&quot; of artificial intelligence in his long-awaited manifesto on the rapidly developing technology, and warned of &quot;new forms of slavery&quot; behind its rise.</p><p>Leo, the first US pope, warned against &quot;a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance&quot;.</p><p>He presented his first encyclical, &quot;<em>Magnifica Humanitas</em>&quot; (Magnificent Humanity) in person at the Vatican, alongside AI experts including Christopher Olah, co-founder of US giant Anthropic.</p><p>Anthropic is embroiled in a legal battle with the US military after opposing the use of its technology for lethal autonomous warfare and mass surveillance.</p><div><a class="fr-green fr-strong" href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/world/2026/5/25/pope-to-release-major-artificial-intelligence-manifesto-1056">READ: Pope to release major artificial intelligence manifesto</a></div><p>At the presentation, Olah said AI companies operate &quot;inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing&quot;.</p><p>He welcomed input from outside actors like the Catholic Church, to &quot;push events in a better direction&quot; saying that &quot;the questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community&quot;.</p><p>In the encyclical, Leo also sounded the alarm over AI-directed weaponry, saying it was &quot;not permissible to entrust lethal&quot; decisions to tech.</p><p>Leo has repeatedly clashed with the White House over the Iran war and its use of religion to justify conflict.</p><p>The &quot;just war&quot; theory -- espoused recently by the Trump administration -- was &quot;outdated&quot;, Leo wrote, adding that &quot;no algorithm can make war morally acceptable&quot;.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>- &#x27;Armed competition&#x27; -</strong></div><p>AI could be worth up to $4.8 trillion by 2033, a 25-fold increase in a decade, while concentrating its profits in the hands of a limited few, according to the United Nations.</p><p>&quot;Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of &#x27;armed&#x27; competition,&quot; the pope wrote.</p><p>&quot;To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity,&quot; Leo wrote.</p><div><a class="fr-green fr-strong" href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/technology/2026/5/13/-it-basically-ruined-my-life-losing-grip-on-reality-while-using-chatgpt-1115">&#x27;It basically ruined my life&#x27;: Losing grip on reality while using ChatGPT</a></div><p>AI should be &quot;human-friendly&quot;, accessible to all and opened to discussion and debate, he added.</p><p>The head of the world&#x27;s 1.4 billion Catholics has made the hot-button issue a cornerstone of his papacy by dedicating to it his first encyclical -- a document which lays the basis for Church teaching and longer-term debate.</p><p>The manifesto references a range of cultural giants, from Greek philosopher Plato to Beethoven and his Ninth Symphony, even citing a character from JRR Tolkien&#x27;s &quot;The Lord of the Rings&quot;.</p><div><br/></div><div><strong>- &#x27;Not magical&#x27; -</strong></div><div><span class="fr-video fr-deletable fr-fvc fr-dvb fr-draggable" contenteditable="false" draggable="true"><iframe width="960" height="540" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PbyQtdPtwP0?autoplay=1&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0" frameBorder="0" allowfullscreen="" class="fr-draggable"></iframe></span></div><p>&quot;<em>Magnifica Humanitas</em>&quot; was signed on May 15, the 135th anniversary of an 1891 encyclical by Leo XIII which laid the foundations of the Church&#x27;s social doctrine during the Industrial Revolution.</p><p>Leo warned of new forms of slavery fuelling the technological revolution, noting &quot;nothing in the world of AI is immaterial or magical&quot;.</p><p>&quot;Every seemingly immediate and flawless response... relies on the silent work of millions of people&quot;, from content moderators forced to watch disturbing material, to children who extract the rare earth elements on which AI depends.</p><div><a class="fr-green fr-strong" href="https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/technology/2026/3/5/vatican-warns-ai-could-lead-to-social-control-0810">READ: Vatican warns AI could lead to &#x27;social control&#x27;</a></div><p>They are &quot;scarred, injured and worn down so that computational flow may continue uninterruptedly&quot;, he wrote.</p><p>Greater efficiency or innovation did not excuse &quot;a chain of exploitation that remains deliberately hidden&quot;, he wrote, while more must be done to reduce AI&#x27;s environmental impact and &quot;protect our common home&quot;.</p><p>He also issued an unprecedented apology for the Vatican&#x27;s role in the slave trade and in helping to justify slavery, saying it was &quot;a wound in Christian memory&quot;.</p><p>&quot;For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon,&quot; Leo wrote.</p><p>The release of the text follows several years of study by the Church on AI-related technologies.</p><p>As early as 2020, the Holy See launched the &quot;Rome Appeal for an AI Ethic&quot;, which called for new technologies to respect human dignity.</p><p>Experts say &quot;<em>Magnifica Humanitas</em>&quot; could prove as influential as Pope Francis&#x27;s &quot;<em>Laudato Si</em>&quot;, a 2015 climate manifesto that triggered political and civic reactions worldwide.</p>

<p>Pope Leo XIV called Monday for the "disarming" of artificial intelligence in his long-awaited manifesto on the rapidly developing technology, and warned of "new forms of slavery" behind its rise.</p>

Pope Leo XIV called Monday for the "disarming" of artificial intelligence in his long-awaited manifesto on the rapidly developing technology, and warned of "new forms of slavery" behind its rise.

Pope urges 'disarming' of artificial intelligence in major manifesto

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Pope urges 'disarming' of artificial intelligence in major manifesto

Clément Melki,

Agence France-Presse

Published May 25, 2026 06:35 PM PHT

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Updated May 25, 2026 08:23 PM PHT

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