POPE DROPS FIRST EVER AI ENCYCLICAL: CALLS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THE DEFINING MORAL TEST OF OUR TIME Pope Leo XIV released his first papal encyclical today, a document titled “Magnifica Humanitas” — meaning Magnificent Humanity — making history as the first pope to dedicate an authoritative church document entirely to the dangers and promise of artificial intelligence. The Vatican chose May 25, exactly 135 years after Pope Leo XIII signed “Rerum Novarum,” the landmark document on the rights of workers during the industrial revolution, a date with obvious symbolic weight. Leo XIV is drawing a direct line between the upheaval of industrialization and what he sees as the equally seismic moral challenge of AI. What makes this more than a symbolic gesture is who was standing at the Vatican beside the pontiff at the presentation: Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, the company behind Claude. The Vatican did not invite a critic of AI to the stage. It invited one of the architects of it. The encyclical centers on the protection of the human person in the age of AI, warning against systems that erode dignity, strip workers of meaningful labor, and accelerate inequality on a global scale. Pope Leo is not calling for a ban on AI. He is calling for AI built around a moral framework that places the human person above efficiency, profit, and speed. Whether Silicon Valley takes moral instruction from Rome is another matter. But today, the most powerful religious institution on earth planted its flag firmly in the AI debate, and it brought Anthropic with it. Keywords: Pope Leo XIV encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, AI human dignity, Anthropic Vatican