"New forms of slavery" : Pope Leo XIV continues his war against AI in his first encyclical

• The head of the Church presents this Monday his first major publication, called “Magnificent Humanity”.
• This 130-page text targets the abuses of artificial intelligence as well as its social and environmental consequences.
• It completes the last years of Vatican reflection on the subject.

The highest Christian authority has not finished its fight against artificial intelligence, quite the contrary. The new stage? The publication this Monday, May 25 by the Vatican of the first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV. This highly anticipated landmark document is dedicated to protecting human dignity in the face of the meteoric rise of AI on a global scale. The Pope participated in the presentation at 11:30 a.m. of the text entitled “Magnificent Humanity” (“Magnificent Humanity” in Latin), 130 pages long, witness to all its importance.

During this presentation, Pope Leo XIV did not mince his words. He called for “désarmer” artificial intelligence for “prevent it from dominating humans”. He even describes the abuses around this technology as “new forms of slavery” Who “feed the gap between the included and the excluded”. Il aspire à “more sustainable technological solutions to reduce the impact on the environment”. 

Position de référence

“In certain regions of the world, adolescents and children work in dangerous conditions grinding the materials from which rare earths are obtained. Bodies marked, mutilated, worn so that the flow of calculation is not interrupted”he denounces in his encyclical.

“In addition, criminal networks use online platforms, messaging systems, anonymous payments and profiling techniques to recruit, control and move trafficking victims, often minors, transforming men and women into data to be tracked and packages to be moved.”insists the religious authority.

In this profoundly social text, the American Pope recalls that AI “cannot be considered morally neutral”, emphasizing the role of education in learning to control risks, and the need for a common code of ethics.

By devoting an encyclical to it, the Pope is indeed sending a strong message. Addressed to all the faithful, it establishes a position of reference on social, moral, political or theological questions and generally serves as a basis for teaching and longer-term debates. He places it in the continuity of his social teaching: it was signed on May 15, the date of the 135th anniversary of “New Things” (1891), encyclical of Leo XIII which laid the foundations of the social doctrine of the Church in the face of the industrial revolution.

Criticisms of AI since Pope Francis

The text is, however, only the culmination of reflections around new technologies initiated by the Church for several years. In 2020, the Holy See launched, with digital companies and academic institutions, the “Rome call for AI ethics”pleading for the development of technologies that respect human dignity. Pope Francis himself had increased his speeches on the subject, calling for these technologies to be regulated and to prevent them from accentuating inequalities.

From his first year in ecclesiastical costume, Leo “environmental devastation” of the “course effrénée” rare earths, essential to modern electronics.

In December 2025, Leo XIV also denounced the race for AI in the military domain, seeing in “the delegation to machines of decisions concerning the life and death of human persons” a “destructive spiral”. The head of the Catholic Church particularly stressed the need for “digital literacy (…) to understand how algorithms shape our perception of reality” and called for more transparency and prevention in these systems which govern the functioning of the different chatbots.

“The industrial revolution disrupted the labor market, people’s lives, hegemony and the balance of power. At the time, it was necessary to train individuals in the use of tools. The same is true today: we must train and educate”explains to AFP Marijana Grbesa, professor at the University of Zagreb and speaker at a conference on AI at the Vatican. Gold “Today, education is not enough. This is also something that the pope emphasizes in his message”she adds.

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