Pope Leo XIV identifies biggest threat to humanity

Pope Leo XIV made a surprise visit Saturday to a sanctuary south of Rome, where he laid out the vision for his papacy and identified what he sees as the greatest challenge facing humanity. 

In his first formal audience, Leo repeatedly cited former Pope Francis and the Argentine pope's own 2013 mission statement, making clear a commitment to making the Catholic Church more inclusive and attentive to the faithful and a church that looks out for the "least and rejected."

What did Leo XIV say about artificial intelligence? 

What they're saying:

Leo XIV identified AI as one of the main issues facing humanity, saying it poses challenges to defending human dignity, justice and labor.

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Leo said he identified with his predecessor, who addressed the great social question of the day posed by the industrial revolution in the encyclical.

Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, Robert Prevost addresses the crowd on the main central loggia balcony overlooking St Peter's Square on May 08, 2025 in Vatican City, Vatican. (Photo by Francesco Sforza - Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images)

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"In our own day, the church offers everyone the treasury of its social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor," he said.

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The backstory:

Toward the end of his pontificate, Francis became increasingly vocal about the threats to humanity posed by AI and called for an international treaty to regulate it. He warned that such powerful technology risks turning human relations into mere algorithms. Francis brought his message to the Group of Seven industrialized nations when he addressed their summit last year, insisting AI must remain human-centric so that decisions about when to use weapons or even less lethal tools always remain made by humans and not machines.

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Francis also used his 2024 annual peace message to call for an international treaty to ensure AI is developed and used ethically, arguing that a technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness is too perilous to develop unchecked.

Dig deeper:

Leo referred to AI in explaining the choice of his name: His namesake, Pope Leo XIII, was pope from 1878 to 1903 and laid the foundation for modern Catholic social thought. He did so most famously with his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed workers’ rights and capitalism at the dawn of the industrial age. The late pope criticized both laissez-faire capitalism and state-centric socialism, giving shape to a distinctly Catholic vein of economic teaching.