Pope Leo XIV invites Anthropic cofounder Christopher Olah to present at Vatican AI ethics encyclical

Pope Leo XIV presented his first encyclical on artificial intelligence, titled Magnifica Humanitas, at the Vatican on May 25, 2026, with Christopher Olah, cofounder of Anthropic, invited to speak at the presentation.

Anthropic built its public identity around AI safety through Constitutional AI, a training approach that introduces ethical principles and rules into AI model behavior, rather than relying solely on manual correction of risky responses.

The Vatican has progressively moved from observing technology ethics to directly engaging with the AI industry, beginning with the 2020 Rome Call for AI Ethics (an initiative with Microsoft, IBM, and other organizations) and intensifying contacts with Anthropic during global AI safety summits.

The encyclical warns that technological power in AI is now predominantly private, concentrated in a small number of transnational actors, and risks creating automated systems that displace human decision-making in thought, choice, information, and relationships.