From the BBC to The Washington Post, media have turned to artificial intelligence (AI) experts and ethicists at The Catholic University of America to explain the meaning and impact of Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in The Time of Artificial Intelligence.
Catholic University has a number of AI ethics and technology experts across disciplines, with the Leonum Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies serving as the hub of AI engagement.
Media outlets worldwide turned to theologians to discuss the moral and ethical concerns of the Church and Pope Leo’s call for action, and to technology experts bridging the worlds of academia, religion, and technology.
Ethics Expert Called Upon by Global News Outlets
Within hours of Pope Leo XIV releasing the encyclical, OSV News published an invited commentary from Charles Camosy, associate professor of moral theology and ethics.
Camosy writes that “AI is not just a faster calculator or a smarter search engine. It ‘challenges the categories of Social Doctrine from within,’ the encyclical says, in ways that require not just new applications of old principles but the development of those principles themselves. Human dignity is under a threat that we have not faced before, and Leo knows it.”
Camosy has been among the most visible Catholic voices engaging the AI revolution. He co-led the amicus curiae brief signed by 14 Catholic moral theologians and ethicists in Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War, arguing from just war tradition and Catholic social teaching that human moral agency must remain central to lethal decisions.
He also has participated in Anthropic-organized convenings with Christian scholars and leaders at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to discuss AI and ethics. He published a preview column for Religion News Service and was quoted by NBC News, BBC, and The Washington Post.
Taylor Black, executive director of Catholic University’s Leonum Institute, leads AI and venture initiatives for the CTO of a major tech company. He is well versed in the central role humanity and human dignity must have in engaging with this new technology and was quoted in a widely-shared Associated Press article. He also spoke with EWTN News Nightly from a tech-builder’s perspective.
A Look at Magnifica Humanitas in Light of New Survey Findings
Sociology Professor Brandon Vaidyanathan directs the Institutional Flourishing Lab. He recently completed a nationally representative “Beauty and Belief” survey of nearly 5,000 Americans, funded by the Templeton Foundation and conducted via Gallup. Several questions explored views and usage of AI and social media.
In a Substack post, Vaidyanathan writes: “From my initial reading of Magnifica Humanitas, [I] found particularly valuable the clear criteria it lays out to help us evaluate new technological innovations.”
He highlighted several themes, including the idolatry of AI; loneliness, faith, and love in an age of machines; and preservation of human agency and human connection in an age of AI.
“I’m especially grateful that the encyclical offers careful claims which are testable, and allows evidence to actually engage with them…The encyclical’s deepest concerns about AI, however, lie beyond what survey data can capture,” he writes.
“It raises vital questions about whether these new technologies are reshaping public truth and how the political economy of their development is concentrating power in ways that threaten human freedom and the common good.”
Connecting Magnifica Humanitas and Rerum Novarum
Pope Leo XIV signed his encyclical on May 15, 2026, the anniversary of Rerum Novarum. That encyclical, on the dignity of work at the time of the Industrial Revolution, was written by his predecessor Pope Leo III.
Dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies Joseph Capizzi told The Washington Post, “What they [the two encyclicals] both say is we’re connected to one another. When some people are vulnerable and suffering, that’s not good for any of us.”
Capizzi also joined EWTN News In-Depth to discuss the document’s key points and its applications beyond artificial intelligence.
In The New York Times, Luke Burgis, an entrepreneur-in-residence with the Busch School of Business, whose current work focuses on the intersection of faith, academia, and technology, said: “This encyclical is a live wire that truly has the potential to change what is getting built in Silicon Valley. It could help to give people a vocabulary to understand a new thing, in the same way that Rerum Novarum helped people understand the concept of a just wage.”
