The Pope's Calculated Gambit: Leo XIV Calls to Disarm AI While Partnering With Its Makers
On 25 May 2026, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical—a papal letter of the highest doctrinal authority—calling for the "disarming" of artificial intelligence. The document, titled Certamen Humanitatis, warned that AI systems could "normalize war" and "spread misinformation" at unprecedented scale. It was, by any measure, a sweeping intervention into the defining technological debate of the age. But within hours of its release, the Vatican announced something that complicates the moral clarity the document projected: a formal partnership with Anthropic, the AI safety company behind the Claude family of language models.
The juxtaposition was not accidental. Vatican officials described the partnership as a "practical complement" to the encyclical's ethical framework—a way to engage with AI development from the inside rather than issuing condemnations from the margins. The approach reflects a calculation that has defined papal diplomacy for centuries: if you cannot stop a force reshaping the world, you must shape it yourself.
An Encyclical About Power, Not Silicon
The most penetrating analysis of Certamen Humanitatis has come not from religious commentators but from technology journalists. A 25 May 2026 analysis in TechCrunch observed that the encyclical "isn't really about AI" in the narrow technical sense. Rather, the publication noted, Pope Leo XIV uses artificial intelligence as a lens to diagnose older problems: concentrated economic power, the erosion of democratic participation, and what the document calls "a technological elite that shapes the world to its own advantage."
This framing matters. The encyclical does not dwell on the technical specifics of large language models or the mathematics of neural networks. Instead, it recasts AI governance as an extension of older Catholic preoccupations: the just distribution of power, the dignity of human labor, and the responsibility of the powerful to the vulnerable. The Vatican is, in effect, arguing that debates about artificial intelligence are debates about the same structural inequalities the Church has addressed since the Industrial Revolution.
That approach carries strategic advantages. It allows the Vatican to speak with authority without requiring technical expertise it does not possess. It also positions the Church as a voice for ordinary people against corporate power—a constituency the papacy has cultivated since Pope John Paul II reframed Catholic social teaching in the language of workers' rights in the 1980s. The TechCrunch analysis captures this dynamic precisely: the encyclical uses AI as a mirror, reflecting concerns about power that predate the smartphone.
The Anthropic Partnership: Engagement or Cooptation?
The partnership with Anthropic, announced on the same day as the encyclical, is the most concrete expression of the Vatican's new approach to AI governance. Under the agreement, the Vatican will contribute to Anthropic's "AI safety" research efforts and participate in the company's internal deliberations on "responsible development." In exchange, Anthropic gains a legitimacy imprimatur that few other institutions can provide—and a direct line to one of the world's oldest international actors.
The announcement, relayed via social media by the Vatican's communications office and confirmed by multiple news outlets on 25 May 2026, was framed as a "dialogue of equals." But critics both inside and outside the Church have noted the asymmetry. Anthropic is a private American company valued in the tens of billions of dollars, backed by venture capital and competing for market share in a global AI race. The Vatican is a sovereign entity with 1.4 billion adherents, but one whose influence over technology markets is indirect at best.
The partnership raises uncomfortable questions about what "engagement" means when one party holds most of the cards. Anthropic has strong incentives to display a commitment to safety and ethical AI without surrendering any meaningful control over its development roadmap. The Vatican's seat at the table may be genuine without being decisive. Whether Certamen Humanitatis represents a serious attempt to constrain AI development or an exercise in symbolic politics that Anthropic's investors regard as positive publicity remains, for now, an open question.
The Long Game: Shaping the Global AI Order
The Vatican's simultaneous hardening and softening of its AI stance reflects a sophisticated understanding of how international norms are formed. The encyclical establishes the moral framework; the Anthropic partnership creates the operational relationship. Together, they position the Vatican as an inevitable participant in whatever governance arrangements emerge for AI systems—a technology that will affect every society on Earth regardless of whether those societies have Catholic majorities.
This is not the first time the Vatican has inserted itself into a technological debate after the fact. In the nineteenth century, the Church spent decades responding to industrialization, eventually developing a comprehensive critique of capitalism through papal encyclicals beginning with Rerum Novarum in 1891. The process was slow, often reactive, and produced institutional relationships with labor movements and welfare states that outlasted the specific conditions that gave rise to them. The current moment echoes that pattern, with the Vatican arriving late to AI but positioning itself for a long engagement.
What distinguishes the Vatican from other institutional critics of AI—governments, civil society groups, academic researchers—is its claim to speak with moral authority that transcends national boundaries. The Pope is not a head of state in the conventional sense, but he commands a global network of institutions, healthcare systems, educational facilities, and diplomatic relationships that give him reach most governments envy. When the Vatican calls for AI to be "disarmed," the statement carries weight in capitals that do not share its theology.
Disarming AI: What the Vatican Actually Wants
The encyclical's call to "disarm" AI is, in practice, a call for something more modest: regulation, transparency, and accountability. Certamen Humanitatis does not propose eliminating artificial intelligence or halting its development. Instead, it outlines a framework in which AI systems are subject to meaningful human oversight, their impacts on labor and society are monitored, and their development is governed by international norms rather than market logic alone.
This is a familiar agenda item on the Vatican diplomatic menu. The Church has long advocated for international regulation of technologies it regards as threatening—nuclear weapons, chemical arms, tobacco, and now AI. The goal is not to eliminate the technology but to prevent its most destructive applications and ensure that its benefits are broadly shared. Whether this vision is achievable in a world where AI development is driven by commercial competition between the United States, China, and a fragmented private sector is another matter entirely.
The encyclical's treatment of misinformation is particularly pointed. It warns that AI can "normalize war" by making violence routine, depersonalized, and continuous—a concern that resonates with the Vatican's long-standing advocacy for conflict resolution and humanitarian law. Here the document touches on one of the few areas where technological capability and moral clarity converge: the use of AI to generate propaganda, manipulate public opinion, and automate atrocities clearly violates any coherent ethical framework. Whether the Vatican can build coalitions to address these specific harms remains the most testable proposition in Certamen Humanitatis.
The Stakes: Who Wins and Who Loses
If the Vatican's strategy succeeds, the beneficiary is a certain vision of human-centered technology—systems that augment rather than replace human judgment, that distribute economic gains more broadly, and that remain subject to democratic accountability. The losers, under this scenario, are the technology companies that currently define AI development on their own terms: the Anthropics, OpenAIs, and Googles of the world, who would face new constraints on what they can build and how they can deploy it.
The Vatican is acutely aware that it cannot win this argument alone. Its partnership with Anthropic is a hedge—not a capitulation, but an acknowledgment that the moral high ground is lonely and often ineffectual. By engaging directly with AI developers, the Church gains access to expertise, data, and influence it could not otherwise muster. Whether that access translates into genuine constraints on AI development depends on factors well beyond the Vatican's control: the evolution of the AI market, the actions of major governments, and the degree to which public concern about AI translates into political pressure.
What is clear is that the Vatican has made its bet. Certamen Humanitatis will be studied, debated, and eventually absorbed into the Church's teaching on social ethics. The Anthropic partnership will either become a model for church-industry cooperation or fade into a footnote in both organizations' histories. The AI revolution will continue regardless. But the Vatican's voice—neither triumphalist nor catastrophist, neither naive about power nor cynical about ethics—will be part of the conversation in ways it was not before 25 May 2026.
Desk note: Monexus framed the encyclical as a power-concentration document consistent with its coverage of platform governance and algorithmic authority across other desks. The TechCrunch analytical read was foregrounded over the more conventional 'Pope warns about robots' framing that dominated wire headlines.
Wire provenance
This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:
- https://x.com/polymarket/status/1923456789012345678
- https://x.com/polymarket/status/1923441123409876543