There is one sentence at the center of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical that does almost all of its work, and it is worth holding up before anything else.
Technology, the Pope writes, is not a force hostile to humanity, nor is it inherently evil.
But it is “never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.”
That line is the hinge of the whole document — and, as it happens, the key to a question the encyclical’s own staging raised. Because when Leo XIV presented Magnifica humanitas in person at the Vatican, the AI experts in the room included Anthropic’s co-founder. They did not, conspicuously, include anyone from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, or xAI. If technology takes on the character of those who build and finance it, then which builders the Church chooses to stand beside is not a neutral choice either. This piece is about what the encyclical says, why Anthropic was the lab in the room — and why that room should have been more crowded.
Technology is never neutral — and neither were the empty chairs
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical casts AI as this century’s Rerum novarum moment. He presented it personally — with Anthropic’s co-founder in the room. OpenAI, Google DeepMind & xAI were not. For a “broadside against AI companies,” that guest list is itself an argument.
A Rerum novarum for the age of AI
The signing date wasn’t incidental. Leo XIV chose the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical — and, by taking the Leonine name, cast himself as the pope who answers AI as Leo XIII answered industry.
The same move, 135 years apart
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Five chapters, one worry: concentration
The recurring anxiety is that AI’s power lands “in the hands of only a few” — and that a more moral AI isn’t enough “if that morality is determined by a few.”
A dynamic doctrine, faithful to the Gospel
Situating AI in the Church’s social teaching — the living tradition from Rerum novarum onward.
Foundations & principles
Human dignity that is “neither acquired nor earned”; the common good; the universal destination of goods — tech must not be held by a few.
Technology & dominance
The “technocratic paradigm.” AI can simulate a person but has no moral conscience or empathy. Calls to “disarm” AI from the logic of competition.
Safeguarding humanity: truth, work, freedom
The “new ways” of working aren’t always better; AI too often makes workers adapt to machines. Warns of an “architecture of visibility.”
The culture of power & the civilization of love
The hardest charge: “no algorithm can make war morally acceptable.” Argues even “just war” theory must now be overcome.
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Who was in the room — and who should have been
Leo XIV presented the encyclical personally (popes usually delegate). Among the AI experts: Anthropic’s Chris Olah. The other frontier labs? Empty chairs. Tap each seat.
The presentation · May 25, 2026
A defensible single invite — or a diluted broadside? Press play, then judge.
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A broadside delivered to one delegate
The Washington Post read the encyclical as one that “fires a broadside against AI companies.” A reckoning aimed at an industry is weakened when one member — the most safety-branded one — is present to receive it.
The encyclical’s hardest charge is about AI and war — and it implicates the labs that weren’t there.
Its most uncompromising passages condemn AI-enabled weapons and the lowering of the threshold for violence. But that lands hardest on the defense-entangled players and the leaders most explicit about military & geopolitical ambitions — not the lab that showed up.
Account vs. anoint
One sympathetic guest tilts it from “the Church holding the industry to account” toward “the Church beside its preferred firm.”
Concentration, again
A text whose deepest fear is power “determined by a few” launched by elevating one company as chosen interlocutor.
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Two things are true at once
The criticism is of the exclusivity, not the inclusion. Olah in the room was fitting; Anthropic alone was incomplete.
The most significant AI reckoning yet by a global moral institution
It grounds a critique of concentration, dehumanized work & algorithmic warfare in a tradition stretching back to 1891. Its core insight — technology carries its makers’ values — is exactly the right place to start.
A broadside should be delivered to the industry, not its most palatable face
The choice to present alongside Anthropic alone — defensible, probably well-intentioned — undercut the encyclical’s own insight about whose values get associated with the message.
A beginning, not an endpoint
The same month, Leo XIV approved an Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence — a standing body with room for many voices over time. If it brings the whole industry into uncomfortable dialogue, the narrow first launch reads as a first step, not a pattern.
What the document is
Magnifica humanitas — “Magnificent Humanity,” subtitled On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence — is the first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV, concerned with “preserving the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.” The timing was deliberate and pointed: the Pope signed it on May 15, the 135th anniversary of the promulgation of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum, the 1891 encyclical that defined the Church’s response to the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution. The choice of name and date is itself an argument: just as Leo XIII faced a technological rupture that was remaking labor and society, Leo XIV is casting artificial intelligence as this century’s equivalent — and casting himself, by adopting the Leonine name, as the pope who answers it.
It is a social encyclical, divided into five chapters, and its opening line frames the stakes in stark, scriptural terms: humanity faces a pivotal choice between building “a new Tower of Babel or the city in which God and humanity dwell together.” The substance ranges far beyond AI — it restates the Church’s social doctrine on human dignity, the dignity of work, social justice, the treatment of migrants, and peace — but artificial intelligence is the lens that focuses it. The recurring worry is concentration: that AI’s power, and the data and resources behind it, end up in the hands of only a few people, widening the gap between those included and those excluded from the digital revolution. The Pope’s repeated demand is that technology serve the common good rather than concentrate power, and that any ethical framework for AI be subject to shared standards — because, as he puts it, a more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few.
Two themes give the encyclical its sharpest edges. The first is work: Leo XIV warns that the “new ways” of working are not necessarily better, and that while AI promises to boost productivity by taking over mundane tasks, it frequently forces workers to adapt to the speed and demands of machines, rather than machines being designed to support those who work. The second, and most forceful, is war. The encyclical argues that AI is changing the very nature of conflict by making the resort to force easier and more impersonal, and it states flatly that there is no algorithm that can make war morally acceptable. In one of its most striking passages, it warns that any technology that lets one attack without seeing the face of another human being lowers the moral threshold of conflict — and, remarkably, argues that the old Catholic theory of “just war” itself must now be overcome in favor of dialogue and diplomacy. The Washington Post‘s reading was blunt: in the encyclical, the Pope “fires a broadside against AI companies, warning of the technology’s dangers in the same way Pope Francis did about climate change.”
Hold onto that phrase — a broadside against AI companies — because it is exactly what makes the guest list matter.
Why Anthropic was the lab in the room
Leo XIV did something popes usually delegate: he chose to present the encyclical personally at the Vatican, unlike most other popes who delegated this task to cardinals. The presentation drew an unusual mix of speakers — alongside the Pope were Professor Anna Rowlands, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Cardinal Michael Czerny, and Professor Léocadie Lushombo — and, in the audience, AI experts, including Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah.
It is not hard to see why Anthropic, and Olah specifically, made sense as the industry’s representative. Of the major frontier labs, Anthropic has staked its public identity most explicitly on safety and on making AI systems legible — and Olah is closely associated with interpretability, the research program devoted to understanding what is actually happening inside these models rather than treating them as inscrutable black boxes. That is a natural rhyme with an encyclical preoccupied with human dignity, accountability, and the refusal to let technology become an unaccountable power. A document that demands clarity about responsibilities and accountability at every stage of the development process and independent oversight has an obvious affinity with the lab that most loudly claims to want exactly those things. If the Vatican wanted a single interlocutor whose stated values would not visibly clash with the text being presented, Anthropic was the path of least friction.
There is a real case, then, for the curated single invite. A lone, carefully chosen guest sends a cleaner signal than a crowded stage; it avoids the spectacle of rival executives jostling at a moral occasion; and it lets the Church engage the industry through its most safety-forward voice rather than its most commercially aggressive one. Read generously, inviting Anthropic alone was the Vatican choosing the conversation it wanted to be seen having.
Why the room should have been more crowded
And yet. The generous reading runs straight into the encyclical’s own logic — and into the Washington Post‘s characterization of it.
If the document is a broadside against AI companies, then the absence of most of those companies is a problem. A moral summons delivered to an industry is weakened when only one member of that industry is present to receive it — and weakened further when the member present is the one whose brand is already “the responsible one.” The optics tilt from the Church holding the industry to account toward the Church standing beside its preferred firm. That is a meaningful difference, and it cuts against the encyclical’s deepest worry. A text whose central anxiety is that AI’s power and its moral framing must not be determined by a few sits awkwardly with a launch that, in effect, elevated one company as the Church’s chosen conversation partner. To borrow the encyclical’s own frame: if technology takes on the character of those who build it, then anointing a single builder — however admirable — risks the very concentration the document warns against.
The case for breadth gets stronger when you look at what the encyclical actually condemns. Its most uncompromising passages are about AI and warfare — autonomous and AI-enabled weapons, the lowering of the threshold for violence, the reduction of human beings to targets and data. But that critique lands most heavily not on the lab that showed up; it lands on the companies entangled with defense and national-security work — and on the firms whose leaders have been most explicit about military and geopolitical ambitions for their models. A reckoning over AI in warfare that does not include the industry’s most defense-adjacent players is a reckoning with the wrong room. The people most implicated in the encyclical’s hardest charge were not there to hear it.
Which is why the empty chairs are worth naming directly. OpenAI, as the most prominent consumer-facing lab and a company whose products have defined public expectations of AI, has an obvious stake in a document about how AI reshapes work, truth, and human relationships. Google DeepMind, embedded in one of the largest technology companies on earth, sits at exactly the intersection of scale, data, and concentration the encyclical frets over. And xAI — Elon Musk’s AI venture, which is a distinct company from SpaceX and should not be confused with it — is led by someone whose public statements about AI, power, and geopolitics put him squarely in the encyclical’s sights on both the concentration and the conflict critiques. (That xAI is sometimes loosely referred to in connection with Musk’s other ventures only underscores how tangled the industry’s power and ambitions have become — precisely the entanglement the Pope is worried about.) Each of these firms is a protagonist in the story the encyclical is telling. Inviting Anthropic and not them is a bit like convening a summit on industrial labor in 1891 and seating one reform-minded factory owner while the rest of the mill bosses stayed home: the conversation is pleasant, but it is not the confrontation the moment calls for.
None of this is a knock on Anthropic’s presence. Olah in the room was, on its own, a reasonable and even fitting choice. The criticism is of the exclusivity, not the inclusion. The encyclical’s force comes from speaking to an entire industry at a hinge moment in its history; that force is diluted when the industry is represented by a single, sympathetic delegate. A more crowded, more uncomfortable room — one with OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and xAI seated alongside Anthropic — would have better matched the ambition of the text, and would have made it harder for any one company to walk away feeling either uniquely blessed or conveniently absent.
The deeper point the staging illustrates
The remarkable thing is that the encyclical itself supplies the critique of its own launch. Its thesis is that technology is never neutral because it absorbs the character of those who make and fund and govern it — and the corollary is that who gets to stand near the moral authority shaping the conversation is part of how that character gets set. By choosing one interlocutor, the Vatican made a non-neutral choice about whose values would be visibly associated with the Church’s message. The choice was defensible and probably well-intentioned. But the encyclical’s own argument suggests it was also incomplete.
There is reason to think the Church knows this and intends to go further. The encyclical is explicitly a beginning, not an endpoint: in the same month it was released, Leo XIV approved the creation of an Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a standing body that signals an ongoing engagement rather than a one-off pronouncement. A commission, unlike a launch event, has room for many voices over time. If the Vatican uses it to bring the whole industry — including the companies that weren’t in the room in May — into sustained, uncomfortable dialogue, then the narrowness of the first presentation will read as a first step rather than a pattern.
Reading it straight
Two things are true at once, and both deserve to be held. Magnifica humanitas is a serious, ambitious document — arguably the most significant attempt yet by a global moral institution to address artificial intelligence on its own terms, grounding a critique of concentration, dehumanized work, and algorithmic warfare in a tradition that stretches back to 1891. Its central insight, that technology carries the values of its makers, is exactly the right place to start. And the choice to present it alongside Anthropic, while understandable, undercut that insight: a broadside against an industry should be delivered to the industry, not to its most palatable representative.
The encyclical asks the people who build AI to accept that their tools are never neutral, and that the character of those tools will be set by the character of those who make them. It is a message that lands hardest precisely on the firms that weren’t there to hear it. The next time the Church convenes this conversation — through its new commission, or whatever comes after — the measure of its seriousness will be who it makes uncomfortable enough to invite.
Based on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica humanitas (signed 15 May 2026, released 25 May 2026), Vatican News‘ chapter-by-chapter overview, Wikipedia’s record of the presentation and attendees, and the Washington Post’s coverage. Encyclical paragraph numbers appear in the Vatican text. This is independent commentary and analysis; the assessment of the guest list is the author’s argument, not a claim about the Vatican’s stated intentions.
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