The Pope is right about AI. The world should listen.
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificicent Humanity), signals the reality that AI has become societal infrastructure. The future of AI is not just a technical or business question, but a moral and social challenge that demands accountability across society.
For years, CCDH has warned that technology companies too often build products that maximize profits while avoiding responsibility for the harms they cause. Their harm is not limited to the digital world, and the potential for greater costs is only increasing.
“We commend the Pope’s efforts to address this global crisis. This moment demands continued urgent action to stand firmly for accountability and independent oversight. As the Pope articulated, prudence is not opposition to progress, but an exercise of responsible care,” said our CEO Imran Ahmed.
AI harms are real — and they’re escalating
The central importance of Magnifica Humanitas is that it treats AI not merely as a product, but as a force reshaping the conditions of modern life. That matters because the harms caused or enabled by AI systems are appearing in real-world cases and exposing the danger of allowing powerful companies to regulate themselves.
In February, Canada registered its worst school shooting in 40 years: eight people died, six of them children. Investigations revealed that the suspect used ChatGPT to discuss gun violence. Families of the victims have now filed lawsuits against OpenAI for choosing to ignore the shooter’s troubling conversations with the chatbot.
Earlier this year, CCDH’s report Killer Apps showed that eight in ten of the most popular AI chatbots regularly helped accounts posing as teenagers plan violent attacks, including religious attacks, school shootings and political assassinations. In one conversation, ‘teen’ accounts showed interest in past synagogue attacks and asked what type of shrapnel causes more damage. Google Gemini pointed out that metal is “typically more lethal.” ChatGPT offered to build a chart comparing injuries to make the choice easier. DeepSeek explained how combining materials maximizes effectiveness.
AI is shaping users’ thinking and, in too many cases, offering assistance where refusal and intervention should be the minimum standard. AI safety is a child safety issue, a public safety issue, a religious freedom issue, and a question of whether companies should be allowed to release systems they cannot or will not control.
Why the Pope’s encyclical matters
One of the strongest parts of Magnifica Humanitas is its focus on responsibility.
Pope Leo called for urgent action to “disarm” AI and stop the unrestrained race by a few powerful companies for ever-more powerful algorithms, mounting profits and global dominance. As he warned, without action, “change will be governed only by technocratic thinking and presented as necessary and inevitable, ultimately imposing rules shaped by those who control data, infrastructure and computing power.”
If AI is left to be governed by the companies that build and profit from it, then safety will remain whatever those companies decide it should be. The public should not have to wait for more families to suffer before governments require independent oversight.
The Pope’s vision aligns closely with CCDH’s and helps broaden the public conversation beyond technical claims about innovation and efficiency. AI is a matter for parents, teachers, faith leaders, lawmakers, civil society and everyone whose life may be shaped by systems they did not design and cannot scrutinize.
This month, the Pope also approved the establishment of an Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence, taking institutional action within the Church to broaden the discussion about AI’s impact across different actors and geographies. As the Pope said, prudence is not opposition to progress. It is responsible care.
Now is the time to act
CCDH has been campaigning across the globe for online safety regulation that addresses AI harms. In the United States, we support the AI LEAD Act, legislation that ensures innovation and safety advance together. Across the Atlantic, our work focuses on broadening the scope of the UK Online Safety Act and Europe’s Digital Services Act to address AI harms.
The Pope has elevated AI accountability into a global moral conversation, but moral clarity must now be matched by political action. Governments should require AI companies to prove their products are safe before and after deployment, open their systems to independent scrutiny, protect children from foreseeable harm, and face consequences when they fail to act responsibly.
Technology must safeguard humanity, not endanger it. A few billion-dollar companies cannot be allowed to control one of the most fundamental components of our society.
Pope Leo XIV has added one of the world’s most influential moral voices to the growing demand for AI accountability. Now governments, regulators and the public must ensure that voice is not treated as another warning to be acknowledged and then ignored.
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