Pope Leo XIV is casting artificial intelligence as more than a technical challenge: in his telling, it is a moral test that could concentrate power in rich countries and corporate systems unless lawmakers intervene.
Speaking Friday in Rome to the International Catholic Legislators Network, Leo urged elected officials to make policy that serves people rather than the machinery of innovation. He warned that rapid AI development could leave poorer countries dependent on wealthier nations for crucial technology — and that innovation could become “another vehicle for ideological or economic colonialism.”1
The pope’s concern runs from the global balance of power to the everyday mechanics of digital life. Algorithms, he said, already exert “a subtle form of domination” when they determine who is visible, shape public debate without accountability and place workers’ dignity beneath system optimization.2
His warning also sharpened a clash over regulation. Leo called for robust laws, independent oversight, informed users and governments unwilling to surrender responsibility for the values built into AI. That approach stands in tension with the Trump administration’s push to loosen federal AI rules after President Donald Trump repealed the previous administration’s executive order in January 2025.
Leo linked the issue to family life as well, arguing that AI must not reduce human relationships to data, expose young people to content that distorts desire, or reinforce economic pressures that make family life precarious. He called instead for policies supporting marriage, parents and young people.
The address continues an AI-focused campaign begun early in his papacy, amid a broader divide between technology optimists who stress automation’s efficiencies and critics who fear job displacement and social harm. Political consultant Christopher Hale argued that Leo’s religious vocabulary may give those anxieties a wider, cross-partisan audience — a challenge Silicon Valley cannot easily treat as another transactional fight.