For First Time, Pope Leo To Join Anthropic To Launch Pontiff’s AI Encyclical On May 25

Last Updated:May 18, 2026, 19:44 IST

Pope Leo XIV and Anthropic to unveil a historic AI focused encyclical, addressing warfare, human dignity, and US tensions over military use of AI.

For the first time, Pope Leo XIV and co-founder of artificial intelligence company, Anthropic, will launch the pontiff’s first encyclical on May 25, the Vatican said on Monday.

According to Associated Press, Leo, who has made AI a priority of his young pontificate, is greatly concerned about AI in warfare and has called for monitoring of how the technology is used.

This comes days after the Pope created an in-house study group on artificial intelligence because of the acceleration in AI’s use, “its potential effects on human beings and on humanity as a whole (and) the church’s concern for the dignity of every human being," said the Vatican.

On May 15, he signed his encyclical, 135 years to the day after his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, dated his most important encyclical, “Rerum Novarum," or Of New Things, Associated Press reported.

The event will be attended by Anthropic’s Christopher Olah, and two of Vatican’s top cardinals, doctrine chief Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández and development chief Cardinal Michael Czerny.

Days after his 2025 election, Leo told the cardinals that the Catholic Church owed it to the world to offer the “treasury of its social teaching" to confront the challenges posed by AI on “human dignity, justice and labour."

This is significant as US President Donald Trump-led administration in February ordered all its agencies to stop using Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology and also imposed major penalties for refusing to allow the US military unrestricted use of its AI technology.

In response, Anthropic sued the US administration, which it has accused of retaliating against it illegally because of its attempt to impose limits on how its AI technology can be deployed, AP reported.

The Vatican’s step into AI came days after Trump ended his visit to China that included AI business. Traveling with Trump on Air Force One were, among others, Elon Musk, whose social media platform X features his AI chatbot Grok, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who recently secured federal approval to sell H200 AI chips to Chinese buyers.

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