VATICAN CITY – Pope Leo XIV has issued a sweeping moral directive targeting the rapid integration of artificial intelligence in global warfare and the systemic human rights abuses embedded in the technology’s supply chain, while offering a formal apology for the Catholic Church’s historical failure to condemn transatlantic slavery.
The intervention positions the Holy See as a central critic of the “digital divide,” arguing that the pursuit of technological transcendence is currently being built upon a foundation of modern exploitation and ethical negligence. By linking the current AI revolution to the labor crises of the Industrial Revolution, the Pope is attempting to frame the governance of AI not as a technical challenge, but as a fundamental crisis of human dignity, with direct implications for how states regulate emerging technologies and enforce human rights norms.
The Ethics of Autonomous Warfare
Central to the Pope’s address is a stern warning against the delegation of lethal force to algorithmic systems. As global powers accelerate the development of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), the Vatican is calling for a hard line on human agency in conflict and urging governments to reflect these red lines in defense policy and arms-control negotiations.
The Pope stated that any use of AI in warfare “must be subject to the most rigorous ethical constraints” and called it “not permissible” to entrust AI systems with lethal decisions.
This stance aligns the Papacy with a growing international movement, including various UN member states and human rights organizations, that advocates for “meaningful human control” over the use of force to prevent unaccountable casualties and the erosion of international humanitarian law. It also echoes concerns raised in debates around the interpretation of the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which requires constant distinction between combatants and civilians and proportionality in attacks, standards that critics argue fully autonomous systems cannot reliably meet.
While the Pope did not endorse a specific treaty text, Vatican officials are expected to press this moral line in multilateral forums where governments are already discussing potential bans or strict limits on autonomous weapons, including within UN disarmament bodies.
The ‘New Slavery’ of the Digital Age
Leo XIV extended his critique beyond the battlefield, focusing on the physical cost of the hardware that powers generative AI and global computing. He specifically highlighted the extraction of rare earth elements-such as cobalt and lithium-essential for semiconductors and batteries, which are often mined under coercive conditions in regions like the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“In some regions of the world, children and adolescents work in dangerous conditions, crushing the materials from which rare earth elements are extracted,” wrote the pope. “The bodies of these people are scarred, injured and worn down so that computational flow may continue uninterruptedly.”
The Pope characterized these conditions as “new forms of slavery,” targeting both the miners and the precarious laborers who tend to the AI systems through data labeling and content moderation in low-wage economies.
“This reality deeply challenges the moral conscience of our time,” he said.
By foregrounding supply chains rather than only frontier AI models, Leo XIV is effectively calling on legislators, multinational corporations, and investors to harden due-diligence rules, strengthen enforcement of existing labor protections, and scrutinize public procurement so that state-funded digital infrastructure is not built on forced or child labor. His remarks are likely to be cited by Catholic bishops’ conferences and faith-based advocacy groups as they lobby for stricter corporate accountability laws and transparency requirements.
Historical Precedents and Institutional Reckoning
To ground his arguments, Leo XIV invoked the legacy of his predecessor, Leo XIII, who addressed the socioeconomic upheavals of the 19th century. He cited the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, a landmark document that defended the rights of workers and criticized the excesses of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution, and which helped shape later Catholic social teaching on labor, property, and the role of the state.
By drawing this parallel, the current Pope suggests that the AI era is mirroring the early industrial age, where profit and progress were prioritized over the survival and dignity of the working class. In his reading, just as industrialization ultimately prompted new labor laws, unions, and social safety nets, today’s digital transition will require updated regulatory and ethical frameworks to protect those rendered invisible by data-driven economies.
In a significant moment of institutional contrition, the Pope also addressed the Church’s historical complicity in the transatlantic slave trade. He acknowledged that the Catholic Church did not forcefully condemn the practice until the 19th century.
“This constitutes a wound in Christian memory,” he wrote. “For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”
That apology, coupled with the contemporary language of “new slavery,” positions the Vatican to speak not only about the past but also about present abuses that intersect with state policy on migration, labor, and digital surveillance, and may add moral pressure on governments weighing reparative measures linked to slavery’s legacy.
The Tower of Babel Warning
Addressing a global audience of “Catholics and all people of good will,” the Pope warned against the hubris of unchecked technological growth. He utilized the biblical allegory of the Tower of Babel to illustrate the danger of human ambition that operates independently of moral or divine guidance.
The Pope stated that the story of Babel shows the risk of any enterprise that “aspires to reach heaven without God’s blessing.”
“With the heart of a shepherd and a father, I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good,” he stated.
Without naming specific companies or governments, Leo XIV implicitly challenged the race for dominance in AI and data as a zero-sum competition for power and influence, and urged policymakers to prioritize interoperable standards, safety benchmarks, and cross-border cooperation over purely national advantage. His language aligns with broader calls for global AI governance frameworks that take into account not only innovation and security, but also the social and environmental costs of large-scale computing.
Despite the scale of the challenge, Leo XIV rejected the notion of fatalism regarding AI’s trajectory. He cautioned against a “subtle temptation” to believe that the problems are too vast for individual or collective action to matter.
“Certainly, not everyone has the same power to make a difference,” Leo said. “Yet, no one is without responsibility. We all have our own areas for action.”
For church institutions, that could translate into ethical investment screens, guidance for Catholic universities and hospitals deploying AI tools, and engagement with tech companies whose products shape public life. For governments, the Pope’s framing adds moral backing to efforts to embed human rights impact assessments and environmental safeguards into AI policy, similar in spirit to how data protection rules such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation helped reset global expectations on privacy.
The Vatican has not yet announced a formal diplomatic mission or a new set of canonical guidelines to implement these ethical constraints. But by tying AI governance to long-standing questions of war, labor, and historical injustice, Leo XIV has signaled that the Holy See intends to be an active moral interlocutor as governments, international organizations, and industry negotiate the rules of the emerging AI order.
