Pope Leo XIV's AI Encyclical Expected May 2026

The Vatican is preparing to release Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical on artificial intelligence, with reports indicating the document will be signed May 15 and distributed by the end of the month. The timing is deliberate: May 15 marks 135 years since Pope Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum in 1891, the first modern social encyclical addressing the industrial revolution.

According to OSV News, the first American pope has addressed AI repeatedly since his election in May 2025, earning a spot on Time magazine's 2025 list of the world's most influential people in artificial intelligence. The encyclical represents his most authoritative statement on the subject to date.

Leo's public positions on AI have been consistent across multiple contexts. In November, speaking via video link to 16,000 young people at the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis, he told students to use AI "in such a way that if it disappeared tomorrow, you would still know how to think." He warned that AI "cannot offer real wisdom" and "will not judge between what is truly right and wrong."

The pope has also cautioned priests against using chatbots to write homilies and called on media outlets to preserve "human voices and faces." His message to legislators from 68 countries at the Vatican's Jubilee of Governments in June emphasized that AI "functions as a tool for the good of human beings, not to diminish them, not to replace them."

These statements align with Leo's broader concern about AI's impact on human dignity and labor. Days after his election, he told the College of Cardinals that he chose his name partly to honor Leo XIII, signaling his intent to apply Catholic social teaching to "another industrial revolution" posed by artificial intelligence.

According to USA Today, Catholic ethicists expect the encyclical to address whether humans are becoming "commodities" by thinking of themselves as machines. John Cavadini, director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, noted that "as soon as you start thinking of yourself as a machine, only not as good, then you're just a commodity and have no other reason to live."

Daniel Daly, executive director of the Center for Theology and Ethics in Catholic Health, emphasized that "AI has no empathy, no conscience, no soul." He warned that the technology risks creating a two-tiered health system unless developers ensure it benefits all people, not just those with existing access to high-quality healthcare.

The pope's December 2025 speech to AI conference participants in Rome expanded on these concerns. He asked, "How can we ensure that the development of artificial intelligence truly serves the common good, and is not just used to accumulate wealth and power in the hands of a few?" He described humans as "co-workers in the work of creation, not merely passive consumers of content generated by artificial technology."

In his January message for the 60th World Day of Social Communications, Leo warned that AI systems have "increasingly taken control of the production of texts, music and videos," putting the human creative industry at risk of being "dismantled and replaced with the label 'Powered by AI.'" He argued this turns people into "passive consumers of unthought thoughts and anonymous products without ownership or love."

The encyclical arrives amid widespread anxiety about AI's impact on job security, human worth, and potential misuse for fraud or disinformation. Nicholas Hayes-Mota, a social ethicist at Santa Clara University, said Leo's choice of papal name signaled a commitment to "recentering that question in a time of economic upheaval."

Leo's background as a former mathematics major has informed his technical literacy on the subject. His statements consistently distinguish between data processing and human wisdom, between efficiency and meaning, between tools and persons. (The distinction matters more than most tech executives seem to realize.)

Whether the document will influence actual AI policy remains uncertain. The Vatican has no regulatory authority over technology companies, and the encyclical's primary audience is the Catholic faithful rather than Silicon Valley executives. The real test will be whether religious communities translate these principles into concrete decisions about AI adoption in education, healthcare, and media.

For now, the encyclical serves as a moral framework rather than a technical specification. Whether that framework gains traction beyond church walls depends on whether secular leaders find the arguments compelling enough to act on them. The technology will keep advancing regardless of what the Vatican says.

Artūras Malašauskas is an AI Systems Integrator with 20+ years of production-grade web engineering experience. He has designed, shipped, and scaled enterprise Python/PHP systems for logistics, SaaS, and public-sector clients. For the past year, he has focused exclusively on AI integrations: deploying open-source LLMs, building generative media pipelines (image, audio, video), and engineering multi-agent workflows for real production environments. His standard: reproducibility, security, cost-efficient inference—no vaporware. He documents and evaluates emerging AI tooling, separating verified capabilities from marketing noise. Technical editor at: muza-ai.eu, ai-verslas.lt, ai-naujinos.lt Connect on LinkedIn