Pope Leo XIV will unveil his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity), on May 25, with senior Vatican officials and Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah taking part in a formal ceremony in the main Vatican auditorium, the Vatican said May 18. The Vatican said the document is intended as a statement of the Church’s approach to human dignity as artificial intelligence reshapes society.
In the Vatican’s description of the encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas is framed around “the care of human dignity in the era of AI.” The May 25 launch will not be limited to the Vatican press room format usually associated with encyclical presentations, the Vatican said, but will instead take place in an auditorium setting with a broader set of presenters and speakers.
The Vatican said two senior cardinals will serve as the main presenters: Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, who leads the Vatican’s doctrine work, and Cardinal Michael Czerny, who leads the Vatican’s development work. Alongside them, the Vatican said Olah will be among the lay speakers, joined by theologians Anna Rowlands and Leocadie Lushombo.
The Vatican said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the secretary of state, will offer the ceremony’s conclusion, and that Leo will then make a speech and give a final blessing. The Vatican also tied the encyclical’s timing to the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s signing of Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), an earlier encyclical that addressed workers’ rights and the duties states and employers owed workers amid the Industrial Revolution.
The Vatican said Leo signed Magnifica Humanitas on May 15. The Vatican linked the new document to the way Leo has said AI poses existential questions comparable to those the Industrial Revolution raised more than a century ago, and it said the encyclical is expected to situate the AI question within the Church’s social teaching, which it said also addresses issues such as labor, justice and peace.
The announcement also places Anthropic and its leadership in the center of a wider policy debate over AI technology. Anthropic has presented itself as prioritizing safety and risk mitigation in its research, the Associated Press reported, and it has drawn scrutiny from the Trump administration, which ordered U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic’s AI technology in February and imposed penalties tied to refusals to allow the U.S. military unrestricted use of its AI systems.
The Associated Press report said Anthropic is suing the administration, alleging the government retaliated against it illegally after Anthropic sought to impose limits on how its AI technology could be deployed. It also reported that Leo, who has made AI a priority early in his pontificate, has been concerned about AI in warfare and has called for monitoring the way the technology is used.
As part of the same competitive context, the Associated Press reported that Anthropic’s chief Dario Amodei had previously worked at OpenAI before leaving in 2021, when a group split from OpenAI amid disagreements with OpenAI chief Sam Altman about AI safety. Anthropic has also warned, the report said, about threats posed by AI technology being used by authoritarian regimes, and it has argued for rules and norms to prevent that outcome.
The May 25 launch adds Vatican access to one of the most visible U.S. AI companies at a time when both the Church and policymakers are weighing how safeguards and human dignity should be treated in the era of advanced AI.