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VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV has approved the creation of a new Vatican commission on artificial intelligence to coordinate the Holy See’s response to the rapidly expanding technology and its implications for human dignity, integral development, and the Church’s own internal use of AI.
The move comes as the Vatican is preparing for the release of Leo’s first encyclical, which is expected to deal extensively with artificial intelligence and its ethical, social, and economic consequences. Reports have indicated that the document will likely frame AI as one of the defining moral questions of the present age, drawing a parallel with the social upheavals of the Industrial Revolution addressed by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum.
The Holy See Press Office announced the decision May 16. It followed a May 3 audience with Cardinal Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
The Vatican said the pope made the decision in light of the development of artificial intelligence in recent decades, its rapid acceleration in general use, its potential effects on the human person and humanity as a whole, and the Church’s concern for the dignity of every human being, particularly in relation to integral human development.
The new commission will include representatives from the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Dicastery for Culture and Education, the Dicastery for Communication, the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
Any changes to the commission’s composition will be submitted to the approval of the Holy Father.
The head of each participating institution will delegate a representative to the commission. Its coordination will be entrusted for one year, renewable, to the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. After that, the Roman Pontiff will entrust coordination to one of the participating institutions, again for a period of one year.
The coordinating institution will be responsible for facilitating collaboration and the exchange of information among the group’s members regarding activities and projects related to artificial intelligence, including policies governing its use within the Holy See. The commission is also tasked with promoting dialogue, communion, and participation.
Pope Leo XIV has stressed the global challenges posed by artificial intelligence since the beginning of his pontificate.
Explaining his choice of papal name in an address to the College of Cardinals on May 10, 2025, Leo said: “In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”
This story was first published by ACI Stampa, the Italian-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
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Encouraging to see the formation of a credible Commission rather than another synodal “expert” Study Group, and that the artificial intelligence of Cardinal Fernandez will not be the kissing face at the table, but rather an appointment from the DDF.
As we look forward to the data-dump world of AI, it’s also edifying to recall the wisdom (wisdom, a useful concept!) of St. John Henry Cardinal Newman:
“I will tell you, Gentlemen, what has been the practical error of last past twenty years [etc!]—not to load the memory with a mass of undigested knowledge, but to force upon him so much that he has rejected it all [….] All things now are to be learned all at once, not first one thing, then another, not one well, but many badly. Learning is to be without exertion, without attention, without toil, without grounding, without advance, without finishing. [….] What the steam engine does with matter, the printing press [and AI!] is to do with the mind; it is to act mechanically, and the population is to be passively enlightened by the mere multiplication and dissemination of volumes [….]
“Wise men have lifted up their voices in vain; and at length, lest their own institutions should be outshone and should disappear in the folly of the hour, they have been obliged, as far as they could with a good conscience, to humor a spirit which they could not withstand, and make temporizing concessions of which they could not but inwardly smile” (John Henry Newman, Discourse VI: Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Learning, “The Idea of a University,” 1852).
Exactly what is the charism or competence of the Vatican to consider the question?
When the Church is not obligated to speak, it is obligated not to speak.
Imagine the Pope ST. Pius X convening some group to study the automobile.
Not a “study group,” and we might even imagine Leo XIII initiating a century-long effort, including some of Vatican II, to NOT ignore the Industrial Revolution and other spiritual sinkholes tangled up in modernity.
This is called the Catholic Social Teaching (consolidated into the Compendium, 2004).
A.I is merely a means to get information from point A to point B and differs from other means of relaying information in its input and processing speed , and energy use, while still lacking in Critical Thinking skills, which only Human Persons have.
At the end of the day, only Human Persons can have the ability and desire to verify the authenticity of the information being imputed into the computer, because only Human Persons have been created in The Image and Likeness of God, at the moment of our conception, with an Intellect and a Will, equal in Dignity, while being complementary as a beloved son or daughter, Willed By God, The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, worthy of Redemption.
Truth begets Truth while error begets error, thus we can know through Faith and Reason, that a Catholic AI which would provide and input information that denies The Deposit Of Faith, thus denying The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, would only be contributing to the false magisterium that is attempting to subsist within The One Body of Christ while denying The Unity Of The Holy Ghost and thus The Divinity Of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity which is apostasy.
Setting up a high powered commission to study the more positive and less positive effects of artificial intelligence on human beings is a step in good direction. The yet-to-come-guide lines from the 2000 year old Catholic Church think-tank will be eagerly looked forward to by pilgrims on journey across cultures and countries of the world.
Just don’t leave it in the hands of the Synodalistas.
Well, they are bringing in the founder of Anthropic:
https://www.ewtnnews.com/vatican/vatican-to-publish-pope-leo-xiv-s-first-encyclical-may-25
I think the Vatican needs to get back to the budMsiness of Church:
GOD!!!!!!!!
AI is very much the business of all of us, very much including the Holy See (I am not myself a Catholic). There is a chronic lack of global governance on AI matters and the Vatican can help to fill the vacuum, as it did so usefully with Laudate Deum on the problem of global warming. Good that the Vatican involves the co-founder of Anthropic in its work.