Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical on artificial intelligence has rapidly shifted from a theological milestone to a flashpoint in global debates over power, war, and work.

On April 29, weeks before publication, major tech firms including Meta, Google, and Amazon quietly lobbied Vatican officials in Rome, presenting themselves as partners in “ethical” AI as the Church drafted its position.¹ Policy and finance capitals watched closely, expecting a document with regulatory implications as much as spiritual ones.

On May 25, Leo released Magnifica Humanitas, a 40,000‑plus‑word letter that calls for AI to be “disarmed” and removed from logics of domination and profit.² The text warns that AI can become a new Tower of Babel, concentrating power, weakening truth, and turning people into data points.³ It urges “robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users, and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility,” and explicitly calls on states to “disarm AI.”⁴

Unusually, Leo presented the encyclical on stage with Anthropic co‑founder Chris Olah, whose remarks underscored the Pope’s central concern: frontier labs face commercial and geopolitical pressures that “can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing,” so outside critics are “enormously important.”⁵ Olah also echoed the encyclical’s alarm over large‑scale job displacement, calling support for displaced workers a “moral imperative of historic proportions.”⁶

Reactions diverged quickly. Analysts noted the letter reads “as tech regulation as much as theology,” framing AI as a structural risk to democracy and children, and as a threat when used in warfare.⁴⁷ Some commentators argued the encyclical is really about older problems—inequality and concentrated power—using AI as the lens.⁸ Others praised its insistence that “technology is never neutral” and that humanity must choose between Babel‑style unchecked growth and rebuilding a shared common good.⁹

Three days later, French startup Mistral’s CEO Arthur Mensch issued one of the starkest rebuttals, directly challenging Leo’s call to “disarm AI” in warfare. With adversaries already deploying military AI, Mensch argued, Europe “cannot afford to step back from defence‑AI work,” insisting threatening rivals mean “we do need to have our own capabilities.”¹⁰ The clash crystallized a core divide: both sides accept self‑defence, but the Pope seeks to sharply raise the threshold for lethal AI, while defence technologists see continued development as strategic necessity.¹⁰

Meanwhile, AI researchers and economists worldwide began debating whether Leo is “right, but not right enough,” as a widely shared post amplified by Yann LeCun put it, arguing that AI is already reshaping communication, work, and the distribution of income and status.Yann LeCun (ylecun)¹¹

By week’s end, Magnifica Humanitas was being read in parliaments and boardrooms as a template for AI governance—and as a rare moral challenge to both Silicon Valley’s “idolatry of profit” and governments’ rush into an AI arms race.¹²³