The Pope's AI Encyclical Isn't Really About AI

Pope Leo XIV has published his first encyclical and, according to TechCrunch's analysis, the headline the press gave it, "the AI encyclical," is largely a misnomer. Artificial intelligence appears in the text, yes, but as a diagnostic lens rather than the patient itself. What the document examines more closely are structural problems that have been worsening for decades: excessively concentrated economic and political power, retreating democratic institutions, and a technocratic class making global decisions with minimal accountability.

That the Vatican devotes a magisterial document of this rank to technological phenomena is not trivial. Encyclicals represent the highest form of doctrinal solemnity in the Catholic Church, and the last time one directly addressed the question of labor and capital was with Laudato si' (2015) and, before that, with Centesimus annus (1991). The fact that Leo XIV chooses AI as his guiding thread says something about the symbolic weight the topic has acquired in global public conversation, even though the central argument predates any language model.

AI as Symptom, Not Cause

The core of the Pope's argument, according to available coverage, is that AI technologies accelerate and amplify concentration dynamics that already existed: platforms intermediating knowledge, digital infrastructure controlled by a handful of companies, and automated decision systems operating without real transparency to affected citizens. The encyclical proposes no prohibitions and regulates nothing, that is not the domain of an ecclesiastical document, but it does directly challenge those who decide how these tools are deployed.

This framing is, in a sense, more uncomfortable than a technical condemnation of AI. Pointing out that the problem is poorly distributed power means pointing to specific actors: large tech corporations, states with mass surveillance capacity, investors capturing monopoly rents on essential digital infrastructure. Discussing "AI risks" in the abstract is, at this point, a relatively safe exercise. Speaking about who benefits from the status quo and at whose expense is a political statement with consequences.

Why This Matters Beyond Religious Circles

The encyclical will receive very uneven reception depending on the audience. For the technical community, engineers, product managers, founders, it may seem distant or irrelevant. But there are at least two reasons to pay attention beyond matters of faith.

First, the document helps normalize critical language about the concentration of technological power in spaces where such language previously did not easily reach: religious communities, conservative political circles, Global South countries with strong Catholic presence. The Catholic Church has institutional presence in places where neither the EU nor organizations like the OECD have real regulatory traction. That such a channel transmits a cautionary message about the tech elite has measurable, if indirect, political effects.

Second, the underlying argument, that technology is not neutral and its benefits are distributed asymmetrically, is exactly what economists, sociologists, and regulators have been formulating for years without achieving much popular support. That it arrives packaged in a format with 1,300 years of institutional history behind it says something about the state of public debate, not just about the Church.

What the Encyclical Does Not Say

It is worth avoiding overinterpretation. A document of this kind does not propose technical solutions, does not evaluate concrete models, nor distinguish between types of AI systems. Its utility is not operational but normative: it establishes a framework of values from which to judge. This has clear limits. The question of how to regulate a language model market, how to audit automated decision systems, or how to design incentives for AI infrastructure to be less monopolistic requires tools that an encyclical cannot, and does not pretend to, provide.

What it can do, and apparently does, is name who gains from the current rules. In a news cycle where AI is discussed mostly in terms of capabilities, benchmarks, and use cases, that shift in focus has its own value.

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From our perspective, what is most interesting about this encyclical is not what it says about AI, but that it confirms the debate over power and technology has already left specialized forums to take hold in institutions with completely different audiences. Whether that debate arrives enriched or distorted will depend largely on how the tech press reports it.