Pope Leo XIV warned humanity against creating “new digital slaveries” in a 42,300-word encyclical about AI, the first major teaching document of his papacy.

In Magnifica Humanitas, Leo “seeks to counterbalance alarm with hope but lands firmly on one side,” The Atlantic wrote: He condemned the use of AI in warfare, calling for the technology to be “disarmed,” and argued that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.”

The document, which the pope presented in Rome alongside an Anthropic cofounder, suggests Leo is trying “less to undermine” AI than shape its future, in a significant test of the Vatican’s influence in the secular world, The New York Times wrote.