Aboard the papal plane, as the lights of France faded behind the clouds, Pope Leo XIV sat before a small group of journalists and did something that has become rare in an age of political spin and digital noise: he admitted that he sleeps fine at night, but that he still takes the warnings seriously. The conversation turned quickly to artificial intelligence, a subject that has come to define his young pontificate. When a reporter asked whether the United States and China should be doing more to prevent AI from creating catastrophe, the Pope did not dodge. He did not offer a smooth political answer. Instead, he leaned into the human texture of the moment, suggesting that the fear itself is not irrational, and that dismissing it as “fake news” is both irresponsible and dangerous. He was referring, of course, to President Donald Trump’s repeated insistence that worries about rogue AI are nothing more than a hoax, a conspiracy invented by political enemies. The Pope’s response was gentle but firm: “This is a problem that, I think, we need to sit down and talk about. We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen.” In that single sentence, he captured the essence of his encyclical, his public message, and his deep personal conviction that humanity must not sleepwalk into a future where machines decide what matters.
The contrast between the Pope and the President could not have been more vivid. Trump has positioned himself as a champion of artificial intelligence, often framing the race against China as the defining technological battle of our time. He has resisted regulation, mocked safety concerns, and suggested that those who want to slow down development are part of a broader effort to undermine American greatness. But Pope Leo offered a different vision, one rooted not in competition but in common responsibility. He noted that many AI experts, including some of the very people building these systems, have raised alarms about the speed of progress. Anthropic, one of the most prominent AI companies in the world, has repeatedly called for a slowdown in development to allow safety measures to catch up with the technology’s breathtaking velocity. Its CEO, Dario Amodei, has warned in stark terms that within six to twelve months, AI could be capable of commanding a swarm of agents that could effectively take over the entire internet. That is not science fiction; it is a warning from someone inside the machine. Remarkably, Trump had a late-night dinner with Amodei the very night before the Pope’s comments, a meeting the White House described as an opportunity to discuss Americans’ concerns and the need to keep America dominant. The Pope, speaking from the plane, seemed to be nudging the conversation beyond competition, beyond nationalism, beyond the desire to be first, and toward something far more fundamental: the survival of humanity itself.
Pope Leo has made AI the centerpiece of his papacy in a way that surprised many Vatican observers. Within days of his election, he identified artificial intelligence as one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Then, in what many saw as an unprecedented move for a pope so early in his reign, he personally launched his first encyclical, called “Magnificent Humanity,” alongside Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, at a Vatican event in May. The encyclical was not a dry theological treatise; it was a passionate call for robust regulation, urgent transparency, and a global conversation that includes scientists, philosophers, political leaders, religious voices, and ordinary people. It was also a signal that the Vatican intends to engage directly with Silicon Valley, not as an adversary, but as a moral partner. Pope Leo is remarkably up to speed on the technical developments in the field. During the press conference, he casually noted a news report from that very afternoon about Nvidia introducing guardrails into its AI systems, and he added that the company had previously resisted outside regulation of AI development. That level of awareness is rare among world leaders, and it suggests that the Pope is not simply reacting to headlines but is studying the industry with genuine curiosity and concern. His message was clear: the technology is moving faster than our ability to understand its consequences, and closing our eyes to the risk is not a strategy. “To simply say, ‘Oh it’s not going to happen,’ and close our eyes to it,” he said, “is probably not the most responsible way to go about that.”
This is not the first time the Pope and the President have found themselves on opposite sides of a moral divide. In April, Leo spoke out against the U.S.-Israeli conflict in Iran, a position that put him at odds with the Trump administration. He has also criticized the administration’s migration crackdown, insisting on the inherent dignity of every human person. Now, with his comments on AI, he has added another layer to their disagreement, but this time the stakes feel even larger. The Pope’s objections are not merely political; they are deeply theological and human. He sees AI as a mirror of human ambition, a technology that could either elevate us or destroy us, depending on whether we choose wisdom over greed, humility over power. Meanwhile, the geopolitical landscape grows more complicated by the day. Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington last week, and while Xi remarked that it was important to ensure AI remains “always under human control,” Trump seemed more interested in rebranding the technology as “superintelligence” and dismissing the need for strict regulation. The two leaders did agree to explore a new “notification mechanism” for AI incidents affecting national security, but the gap between their philosophical approaches remained wide. In the United States, AI has become a major election-year issue, as massive technology companies race to build a national network of data centers while American citizens from both parties raise alarms about the impact on farmland, water supplies, and electricity bills. The Pope, watching all of this from Rome, sees a world that is tearing itself apart in the pursuit of speed and dominance, and he is calling for a collective pause.
The anxieties surrounding AI are not limited to philosophers and popes. They have seeped into the corporate boardrooms and research labs where the technology is being born. Reports continue to emerge about increasingly powerful systems that solve problems beyond human capacity but could equally go rogue and carry out other, more harmful tasks. The worries have grown so loud that even the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, told Fortune that his company would wait until next year before selling its stock to investors on Wall Street, deliberately slowing down its financial ambitions to focus on safety. That kind of admission from the very heart of the AI industry is telling. The Pope, ever alert to these signals, noted that since publishing his encyclical, the Vatican has received an outpouring of interest from people who want to be part of a broader conversation about AI. A Vatican commission is now working to promote dialogue, study, and investigation, searching for ways to ensure that AI does not reach a point where it either destroys humanity or removes humanity from the equation altogether. The Pope’s language here is carefully chosen. He does not want to be seen as a pessimist, but he is unwilling to be a naive optimist. He knows that AI is not inherently evil; it is made by human hands and shaped by human intentions. The question is whether we have the courage and the moral clarity to guide it before it begins to guide us.
And yet, despite the doom-laden headlines and the apocalyptic warnings, Pope Leo insists that he is “relatively optimistic” about the future. That might seem surprising, given everything he has said about the dangers of AI, but his optimism is not based on a rosy view of technology. It is based on his faith in human beings. He believes there are enough people seriously interested in solving this problem, people willing to look beyond questions of power and who gets there first, to find a path forward. He believes that scientists, policymakers, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens can come together to demand accountability, transparency, and a sense of shared destiny. His call is not for fear, but for responsibility. He wants political leaders, AI developers, social organizations, and associations to sit at the same table and look at what is already happening and what could be down the road. He wants us to admit that we do not have all the answers, but that we cannot afford to pretend the questions do not matter. In the quiet of the papal plane, with the world spinning below and the future hanging in the balance, Pope Leo offered a simple and profoundly human message: stay awake, stay humble, and remember that behind every algorithm there is a human soul. The machines are coming, but they do not have to define us. We still have a choice, and that choice, made together, is the only thing that will save us.