Pope Leo XIV recently discovered that even the Vatican is not immune to the modern algorithmic gaze, after a tech company tested his speeches for artificial intelligence and declared them human-authored. But behind the digital novelty of AI content-detection software lies a serious theological framework. Released in May 2026, Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, outlines how the Catholic Church should confront the AI era. Rather than approaching technology as an entirely unprecedented challenge, the Vatican is relying on subsidiarity—a tenet of Catholic social teaching designed to protect human dignity against centralized corporate power.
From the Industrial Assembly Line to Silicon Valley Black Boxes
Subsidiarity is not a recent invention born out of Silicon Valley’s generative boom. The principle dictates that, whenever possible, decisions should be made by the people most affected by them, keeping authority at the closest possible level to the individual. Nearly a century ago, Pope Pius XI formalized this concept in his 1931 encyclical, Quadragesimo anno, published forty years after Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 text on Catholic social teaching. Both documents served as a direct theological response to the Industrial Revolution, confronting an era where unrestrained capitalism relegated laborers to grueling factory assembly lines under the thumb of corporate managers.
In Quadragesimo anno, Pius XI warned that unchecked economic power destroys free competition and replaces it with corporate dictatorship. This historical critique resonated far beyond church walls. During his 1932 presidential campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt embraced the encyclical’s framework, declaring it radical in its rejection of wealth concentration and centralized economic control. Today, the Vatican views modern artificial intelligence platforms—such as Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT—through this exact historical lens. As proprietary black boxes controlled entirely by tech giants, these systems mirror the corporate dominance that Catholic social teaching has spent nearly a century opposing.
The Evolution of Vatican Tech Policy
The path from industrial labor to machine learning has been charted across successive pontificates. Toward the end of his papacy, Pope Francis voiced deep concern that artificial intelligence would fundamentally alter human identity and social relationships. Responding to these anxieties, the Vatican’s department of culture and education convened scholars at the dawn of the AI boom to publish a 2023 text exploring how subsidiarity could protect marginalized communities from algorithmic harm.
This intellectual trajectory culminated in Antiqua et nova, a Vatican document issued in 2025 that condemned the monopolization of artificial intelligence by powerful tech monopolies. Building directly upon these precedents, Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica humanitas argues that AI systems must never be imposed from above in an opaque or unilateral manner. Instead, the pope insists that technology must be directed toward the common good via transparency, accountability, and meaningful participation from everyday users, nonprofits, and governments.
AI labs frequently rely on centralized extraction, harvesting massive training datasets through pervasive user monitoring while outsourcing data annotation to low-paid workers in the developing world. By applying subsidiarity to this ecosystem, the church aims to dismantle these top-down structures and prevent moral deskilling—the degradation of decision-making caused by over-reliance on chatbots.
Practical Subsidiarity in the Digital Age
Translating an ancient theological principle into functioning software requires concrete alternatives to Silicon Valley’s dominant offerings. Emerging tech startups, including Catholic company Longbeard, are beginning to build tools that align specific digital values with particular faith communities. Meanwhile, completely open-source artificial intelligence projects offer transparent, reconfigurable access that hands control back to the end user.
For instance, parents can configure open-source platforms to restrict automated homework completion or prevent the generation of inappropriate imagery. Computer scientists and faith leaders are actively developing alternative engineering frameworks that train artificial intelligence models using publicly available information or Creative Commons data, bypassing the invasive monitoring practices common across the tech sector.
As artificial intelligence continues to reshape global society, the enduring relevance of subsidiarity offers a compelling blueprint for human agency. How do you think everyday users can best reclaim control over the algorithms shaping our daily lives? Share your thoughts below.
