When drawing up a list of people to consult on technological developments, the Bishop of Rome would not be near the top of many people’s rankings. But this week, Pope Leo XIV published a 42,000-word teaching on the ethical and political implications of the growing power of artificial intelligence (AI).

The document, Magnifica Humanitas (‘The Grandeur of Humanity’), doesn’t issue flat direction one way or the other on how to respond to AI, but frames a series of conversations about what it might mean to safeguard the best parts of being human in the time of AI.

When he took on the name Leo, the pope was signalling his intentions to follow in the footsteps of the last pope to carry that name. Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903) is remembered for instituting what has come to be known as the Catholic social tradition.

In 1891 he published a papal encyclical – the formal title for an authoritative teaching that takes the form of a letter – called Rerum Novarum (‘Of New Things’) which addressed the plight of workers in the industrial age, specifically “the enormous fortunes of some few individuals, and the utter poverty of the masses”.

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