- AI
Magnifica Humanitas — a surprisingly modern move by the Pope
AI-generated image. ChatGPT doesn't fully capture St. Peter's Basilica.
Pope Leo XIV sat next to Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah this week and presented his first encyclical on protecting humanity in the age of AI.
My first reflex: classic Vatican theatre, the Church warning against tech.
Then I looked closer — and changed my mind.
First: Leo is a mathematician.
Degree in math, taught math and physics at high schools in Chicago before becoming a priest. This March he published an official message for the International Day of Mathematics. This is not a Pope commenting on tech from gut feeling.
Second: the encyclical is not anti-tech.
"Technology can heal, connect, educate and protect our common home," Leo writes. His critique isn't aimed at AI itself, but at the idea that a handful of tech companies should set the moral standards of the future. His call: "disarm AI" — literally from autonomous weapons, and metaphorically from the logic that whoever has the strongest AI gets to write the rules.
Third: the stage next to Olah was no accident.
The Church has rarely engaged this directly with a current debate, and almost never this openly with a tech leader. Both walked away winners. The Pope picked up tech credibility; Anthropic picked up moral credibility. It was a signal: this debate doesn't belong to Silicon Valley alone.
Religions have been experimenting for a while.
Kabbalah teachers like David Ghiyam launched AI apps for spiritual guidance. Muslim platforms got validated by scholars. Reform Judaism is debating AI-assisted Torah study. Even within the Catholic world, AI apps already have over 100,000 monthly users.
What's interesting: these apps don't replace faith. They often bring people back into community. Someone who gets a Torah question answered at 3 am is more likely to show up at synagogue on the weekend. Someone using a meditation bot eventually looks for the real teacher.
Who would have thought — AI might actually be giving religion a boost no one saw coming. People are craving real connection, and the digital is leading them back into the physical room.