By Robert Patterson
In a week when tech leaders gathered to tout artificial intelligence as the future of progress, Pope Leo XIV chose a different register, one part theology, one part ethics, and unmistakably political.
Speaking through a Vatican seminar titled Digital Rerum Novarum: Artificial Intelligence for Peace, Social Justice, and Integral Human Development, the pontiff renewed his appeal for a global regulatory framework to govern AI, warning that the technology’s explosive growth risks igniting “a new arms race” unless humanity musters what he called “the audacity of disarmament.”
A Modern “Rerum Novarum”
The two-day conference, held October 16–17 by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, took its cue from the Church’s 19th-century social manifesto Rerum Novarum, the same document that inspired Leo XIV’s papal name.
Like his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who confronted the moral chaos of industrial capitalism, the new pope sees AI as a crucible for human dignity in an age of automation. In his first address to the College of Cardinals last May, he called the present moment “a new industrial revolution,” pledging to put technology at the center of his papacy’s moral agenda.
Since then, he has warned repeatedly that AI poses a “threat to human dignity, justice and labour.” His concern, Vatican aides say, is not simply with machines replacing workers, but with what he calls “the displacement of the human heart by the algorithm.”
A Call for Global Ethics, Not Panic
In Vatican language, the appeal for an international AI framework echoes the Church’s long-standing calls for global cooperation on issues ranging from climate change to migration. But Leo’s intervention also represents something new, an attempt to insert moral reasoning into a debate dominated by data scientists and defense ministries.
At the seminar, participants, a mix of ethicists, economists, and digital policy experts — urged world governments to “halt the AI arms race”, aligning directly with the Pope’s rhetoric. Their recommendations call for transparent oversight, shared accountability standards, and an enforceable international treaty to prevent the militarization of AI systems.
“The Holy Father’s vision,” said one academy official, “is not anti-technology. It is profoundly pro-human.”
The Audacity of Disarmament
The phrase that captured headlines, “the audacity of disarmament”, comes from Leo’s reflection on how AI development mirrors the nuclear buildup of the last century. In his telling, humanity again risks “inventing power faster than wisdom.”
He has framed AI not as a menace to be banned but as a tool to be governed with conscience. Or as Vatican News summarized it: the Pope wants AI to build “a more authentically just and human global society,” but he is “not impressed with what he’s seen so far.”
Between Faith and Silicon
Since his election, Leo XIV has tried to define a papacy fluent in both moral tradition and modern vocabulary. His speeches are peppered with references to machine learning, neural networks, and “data colonialism”, terms that rarely surface in St. Peter’s Square.
Yet his approach also follows a familiar Vatican playbook: start with principle, move toward policy. As one Jesuit adviser put it, “Francis gave us Laudato Si’ for the planet. Leo seems intent on giving us Rerum Novarum 2.0 for the digital world.”
What remains unclear is whether the Vatican’s moral authority can still shape the global conversation. In a field moving at the speed of code, papal words may struggle to keep pace. But for a world already anxious about AI’s power, Leo XIV’s warning lands with an ancient weight: the reminder that innovation without virtue rarely ends well.
Written by Robert Patterson, M.A.
Robert holds a Master's degree in Religious Studies with a focus on Catholic Church History. He has spent over two decades researching the lives of the Popes and the history of the Papacy. PopeHistory.com has been a trusted resource for papal information since 2001.