On May 25, 2026, the co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind one of the world's most widely used AI tools, will stand at the Vatican alongside Pope Leo XIV for the release of his first encyclical.
That is not a sentence I expected to write. But it is exactly what happened. And I think it is one of the more significant moments in the public conversation about AI.
The encyclical is titled Magnifica Humanitas, the magnificence of humanity. Pope Leo signed it on May 15, 135 years to the day his namesake Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum, the document that changed how the world thought about the rights of workers and the dignity of every human being in the face of the Industrial Revolution. Where Leo XIII addressed that upheaval, Leo XIV is addressing the rise of artificial intelligence and its implications for human dignity today. The parallel is deliberate. And to a growing number of us, so is the urgency.
This encyclical gave language to something I have been trying to articulate. The Rome Call for AI Ethics, signed in 2020, laid the groundwork. Together they offer honest guidance for anyone trying to engage with AI responsibly.
"How can we ensure that the development of artificial intelligence truly serves the common good, and is not just used to accumulate wealth and power in the hands of a few?"
That question is from Pope Leo XIV himself, speaking at an AI conference in Rome last December. It is the question I bring into every discussion about the ethical and responsible use of AI.
What the Rome Call Actually Says
Before this encyclical, there was the Rome Call for AI Ethics, a document signed in 2020 by the Pontifical Academy for Life, Microsoft, IBM, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Italian government. It has since been joined by faith communities, universities, and organizations from across the world, including Muslim and Jewish institutions. It was designed from the beginning to cross every boundary of culture, sector, and faith. That is precisely why it holds. And it is why I use it as a foundation with colleagues, friends, relatives, and customers, regardless of their background.
The Rome Call is built on six principles. They are not complicated. They are not technical. They are about what it means to use a powerful tool with integrity.
The Six Principles of the Rome Call for AI Ethics
These principles are not abstract. They are the criteria I consider when I ask: is this tool actually right for you or your organization? What happens if it fails? Who is accountable? Who could be harmed?
What AI Actually Is
Here is what I want people to understand before anything else: AI is a tool. A powerful one, but a tool. It does not have values. It does not have judgment. It does not care about your students, your clients, your community, or your place of worship. You do. That is not a weakness. That is the whole point.
When people use AI well, they bring their knowledge, their relationships, and their ethical commitments to the work. The AI assists with tasks that would otherwise compete for their time and attention. The human stays at the center, makes the calls, and takes responsibility for the outcomes. It is an invitation to work more closely with the people around you, to innovate, and to spend more time on what you believe matters most. This is what I have seen in my own work.
But the technology is only as good as the values of the people deploying it. And right now, that is where the honest conversation gets harder.
Some communities hosting the infrastructure that powers AI have not been given a voice in decisions that affect their water, their power grids, and their land. The people most likely to be harmed by an AI system are often the people who had the least say in the decisions behind it. Some of the companies building that infrastructure are moving fast, without always bringing communities along. Microsoft is one example of a company making serious public commitments to do better, and is notably a Rome Call signatory.
These are not technical problems. They are human ones. And they are exactly the kind of problems that institutions with deep roots in their communities are built to ask.
How This Connects to the Way I Talk About AI
In my conversations about AI tools, I often point people to two frameworks together: the Rome Call's six principles, and the ACHIEVE framework developed by Dr. Jules White at Vanderbilt University. They dovetail nicely. Both center the human being as the one who retains judgment, discernment, and accountability, with AI extending human capability, not replacing it.
Pope Leo XIV said it to a stadium full of teenagers: use AI in such a way that if it disappeared tomorrow, you would still know how to think. That is not a warning against the technology. That is the most important thing anyone has said about how to use it well. It is also an invitation to keep learning, to use these tools to go deeper into the work you care about, and to grow in the areas where you want to grow.
Use AI in such a way that if it disappeared tomorrow, you would still know how to think.
What This Means for Organizations Right Now
If you lead an organization, a diocese, a school, a nonprofit, a small business, and you are trying to figure out how to engage with AI responsibly, this encyclical is worth reading. Not because it gives you a technology roadmap, but because it gives you a values framework that you may already share without knowing it has a name.
The questions it asks are the right starting questions. Who is accountable for the decisions this system makes? Who could be excluded or harmed? Do the people affected by this technology understand how it works? Is there a human being who can override it, correct it, and take responsibility for its outcomes?
These are not technical questions. They are governance questions. Leadership questions. They are the questions your organization already knows how to ask about everything else it does. AI is not different. It just requires you to ask them before you deploy, not after.
A Note on This Moment
Something worth acknowledging: at the Vatican press conference presenting Magnifica Humanitas on May 25, Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, the company that makes the AI assistant Claude, will speak alongside Pope Leo XIV. That was confirmed by the National Catholic Reporter on May 18, 2026. It is a remarkable convergence. The same tools that the people I work with are learning to use, and that I use in my own work every day, are present at this conversation at the highest level.
That tells me the conversation is serious. And it tells me that anyone with deep values and real responsibilities to the people they serve should be part of it, too.
I am here if you want to start that conversation.