Pope Leo XIV will publish “Magnifica Humanitas,” the first papal encyclical dedicated entirely to artificial intelligence, on May 25. Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah will serve as a keynote lay speaker at the Vatican launch event, the Vatican announced on May 18, according to the Associated Press via PBS.
The document addresses “the protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence,” according to Vatican News. Leo signed the encyclical on May 15, exactly 135 years after Pope Leo XIII signed “Rerum Novarum,” the 1891 encyclical on workers’ rights during the Industrial Revolution that became the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching.
The Launch Event
The Vatican is staging this as more than a press briefing. The presentation will take place in the main Vatican auditorium rather than the usual press room, with an all-star lineup of presenters. Doctrine chief Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández and development chief Cardinal Michael Czerny will lead the event. Olah will speak alongside theologians Anna Rowlands and Leocadie Lushombo. Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin will offer a conclusion, and the pope himself will deliver a speech and final blessing, per PBS.
Encyclical launches typically feature a handful of selected officials answering reporters’ questions. This event’s scale signals that the Vatican treats AI governance as a defining issue of this pontificate.
The Political Dimension
Olah’s presence at the Vatican carries weight beyond his technical expertise in AI interpretability. Anthropic is currently suing the Trump administration after a February 2026 executive order banned all U.S. agencies from using Anthropic’s technology and imposed penalties for the company’s refusal to give the U.S. military unrestricted access to its AI systems, as reported by PBS.
Leo has made AI in warfare a priority and has called for monitoring how the technology is deployed. Inviting an Anthropic co-founder to present alongside senior cardinals, while the company is in active litigation with the U.S. government over military AI use, is a pointed alignment of institutional positions.
The Guardian noted the encyclical is expected to place AI governance within the broader framework of Catholic social teaching, covering labor, justice, and peace. The current pope has explicitly drawn parallels between the AI revolution and the Industrial Revolution that prompted Leo XIII’s intervention in 1891.
What to Watch on May 25
The encyclical’s full text will be the first comprehensive statement from a major global institution framing AI governance as a moral and theological question rather than a technical or regulatory one. For agent builders and platform operators, the document could influence how institutional customers (universities, hospitals, government agencies with Catholic constituencies) evaluate AI deployment policies. It also positions Anthropic’s safety-first brand alongside the Vatican’s moral authority at a moment when the company’s relationship with the U.S. government is adversarial.