The growing prevalence of artificial intelligence across numerous industries has been hard to ignore, even for the Catholic Church.
Pope Leo XIV, the first-ever US-born pope, addressed the College of Cardinals on Saturday for the first time since the papal conclave. In his speech, the new pope said artificial intelligence influenced his decision to take the name Leo XIV.
“Sensing myself called to continue in this same path, I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical ‘Rerum Novarum’ addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution,” Leo XIV said. “In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labor.”
Saturday’s address isn’t the first time the Catholic Church has reflected on artificial intelligence.
In January, the Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church, published a lengthy note on the relationship between artificial intelligence and human intelligence. The note said the Catholic Church “encourages the advancement of science, technology, the arts, and other forms of human endeavor” but sought to address the “anthropological and ethical challenges raised by AI — issues that are particularly significant, as one of the goals of this technology is to imitate the human intelligence that designed it.”
Leo XIV’s predecessor, Pope Francis, also discussed AI in a January 2024 message published by the Holy See.
“The rapid spread of astonishing innovations, whose workings and potential are beyond the ability of most of us to understand and appreciate, has proven both exciting and disorienting,” Pope Francis said. “This leads inevitably to deeper questions about the nature of human beings, our distinctiveness and the future of the species homo sapiens in the age of artificial intelligence. How can we remain fully human and guide this cultural transformation to serve a good purpose?”
Pope Francis added, “At this time in history, which risks becoming rich in technology and poor in humanity, our reflections must begin with the human heart.”
