Editors at National Review Online ponder the pope’s reaction to artificial intelligence.
Pope Leo XIV telegraphed his intention to write a document on AI upon his election. The very selection of his name was meant to hearken back to his predecessor who expressed the church’s reservations and guidance about the dawning of the industrial era.
This has made Magnifica Humanitas perhaps the most widely anticipated church document since at least the Second Vatican Council. …
… And yet, in 2026, despite scandal and defection, perhaps no institution other than the Catholic Church is felt to have the philosophical depth, commitment to humanity’s true welfare, historical perspective, and moral authority to comment adequately on this. No panel of eminent professors, no conclave of other religious leaders would be offering more than another set of opinions. A new moral question has transfixed the powers of the West, and all eyes are on the See of Peter.
And that is what makes the publication a slight disappointment. At 42,000 words, Magnifica Humanitas is an especially lengthy document for the church. Its ambition is evident in a section that attempts to recapitulate the entire body of Catholic social teaching from the papacy throughout the centuries.
Importantly, Pope Leo declared that “human beings, created by God, can never be replaced by machines, no matter how intelligent they become,” and warned against “equating this type of ‘intelligence’ with that of human beings.”
At the same time, the document acknowledges that technology is a glorious part of humanity’s God-given capacity for creation and invention. It rejects the Luddite view that tech is “antagonistic to humanity.” But it warns that “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.”
We find ourselves unable to resist the temptation to point to the small irony that a pope who has been outspoken against immigration enforcement chose as his biblical example of technology used for godly ends the building of the walls around the city of Jerusalem.
