Zac Johnson · May 26, 2026
Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical yesterday. It's about artificial intelligence. I read it cover to cover and sat with it overnight. Thankfully, as a lawyer, I'm used to long magisterial texts.
Here's what stood out.
1. AI is the defining question of our moment.
Just as Leo XIII confronted the Industrial Revolution in Rerum Novarum, Leo XIV sees AI as a force that will shape how human beings work, think, relate, create, learn, and understand themselves. He is not treating it as one issue among many. He is treating it as the question that will shape the others.
2. It all comes down to vision.
Pope Leo calls AI "a valuable tool that requires vigilance," capable of serving "integral human development" but also capable of harm. The difference lies in the vision shaping its design and use. Pope Leo's test is direct: does AI make human life "more human"? When the answer is yes, it becomes "an opportunity to be embraced responsibly."
3. Moral responsibility does not begin when technology is used. It begins when technology is designed.
What a machine measures, rewards, ignores, or optimizes already reflects assumptions about what is good for us and for society. Pope Leo puts it plainly: "every design choice reflects a vision of humanity." Those who make those choices are responsible for them.
4. No machine can replace human relationships.
AI may imitate intelligence, but it cannot love, suffer, or form genuine bonds. It can simulate empathy, friendship, and even affection, but a simulated relationship is not a relationship. It is the appearance of one. Pope Leo warns that the deepest danger is that we slowly lose the desire for human connection at all. In the age of AI, we must "remain profoundly human."
5. Technology can help us. It cannot save us.
The modern world increasingly promises transcendence through technological enhancement, nonstop entertainment, optimized bodies, artificial intimacy. Christianity is grounded in something radically different. The path to the fullness of life is not technological divinization, but grace. No machine can satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. Only Jesus Christ can.
These truths shape everything we're building at Truthly. We take Pope Leo's questions seriously. We've written about how we think about AI and faith in Why Catholic AI, and why Truthly exists in Why Truthly.
In Pope Leo's imagination, there are two options before us: the Tower of Babel or the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Babel is humanity attempting to build a world without God, a civilization marked by pride, self-sufficiency, uniformity, and the pursuit of power detached from truth. Jerusalem is rebuilding with humility, shared responsibility, many voices, and God at the center.
That is the choice. Not whether AI becomes more advanced, but whether we become more faithful, more wise, and more human in the process.