Religion in the Age of AI
Today’s AI signal is not coming from a frontier lab, a state legislature, or an enterprise software rollout. It is coming from the Vatican.
On Saturday, May 16, Pope Leo XIV approved the creation of an Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence, formally coordinating the Vatican’s work on AI across seven Vatican bodies. The move comes as the Vatican prepares for Leo XIV’s first encyclical, reportedly centered on artificial intelligence, human dignity, labor, peace, and the moral conditions under which technology should serve human beings rather than reduce them. The timing is deliberate: Leo signed the encyclical 135 years after Pope Leo XIII dated Rerum Novarum, the 1891 encyclical that became the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching in response to industrial capitalism. (vaticannews.va)
This is the right frame: religion in the age of AI, not simply faith and technology. The question is not only whether individuals will use chatbots for prayer, sermons, study, or companionship. The larger question is how the world’s religious institutions and traditions will interpret a technology that touches labor, truth, embodiment, authority, creativity, human dignity, war, and the meaning of intelligence itself.
• The Vatican has formally organized its AI response. Pope Leo XIV approved the Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence in a rescript dated May 12 and released May 16. The commission will include representatives from the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Dicastery for Culture and Education, the Dicastery for Communication, the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. For the first year, coordination sits with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. This matters because it moves Vatican AI work from scattered statements and conferences into a coordinated institutional structure. (vaticannews.va)
• The rescript frames AI as an anthropological question, not merely a regulatory one. The Vatican text cites the acceleration of AI, its potential effects on human beings and humanity as a whole, and the Church’s concern for the dignity of every human person, especially in relation to integral development. The commission’s role is not only to discuss AI externally but also to coordinate policies on AI use inside the Holy See. That means the Vatican is treating AI as both a moral question for the world and a governance question for the Church itself. (vaticannews.va)
• The forthcoming encyclical is being positioned as an AI-era counterpart to Rerum Novarum. AP reports that Leo signed the encyclical one day before the commission announcement, 135 years after Pope Leo XIII dated Rerum Novarum. That 1891 text addressed workers’ rights, the limits of capitalism, and the obligations of states and employers during the Industrial Revolution. The new encyclical is expected to place AI within Catholic social teaching, especially around labor, justice, human dignity, and peace. Axios separately reports that the document is expected to focus on AI’s impact on people and working conditions. (apnews.com)
• The Pope is also connecting AI to war and peace. On May 14, Leo XIV warned at La Sapienza University that investments in artificial intelligence and high-tech weaponry were contributing to a “spiral of annihilation.” He called for better monitoring of AI’s development and use in both military and civilian contexts so that AI does not absolve humans of responsibility or worsen the tragedy of conflicts. This puts autonomous and AI-assisted warfare squarely inside the Church’s AI agenda, alongside labor and communications. (apnews.com)
• The Rome Call for AI Ethics remains the bridge between religious institutions and technology companies. The Vatican-backed Rome Call has previously drawn signatories including IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, the Italian government, and religious communities beyond Catholicism. Le Monde reported that the pact has been joined by several religious communities and commits signatories to principles such as transparency, reliability, and privacy. That makes the Vatican’s new commission more than a symbolic gesture. It has an existing diplomatic and institutional channel into the technology sector. (lemonde.fr)
• The faith-based AI market is expanding quickly, and not always comfortably. AP reported in April that religious AI tools now include AI-generated Jesus video calls, alleged Hindu gurus, Buddhist priests, Catholic-style chatbots, sermon translators, and other spiritual guidance tools. One company, Just Like Me, charges $1.99 per minute for users to speak with an AI-generated Jesus avatar. The same AP report noted concerns about whether religious AI tools blur authority, attachment, prayer, scripture, and pastoral care in ways users may not fully understand. (apnews.com)
• Buddhist AI is moving beyond chatbots into embodied ritual assistance. AP’s reporting on the faith-based AI boom describes Buddhist applications including BuddhaBot and related projects designed to answer questions using Buddhist texts or assist religious engagement. These tools raise a different question than ordinary content generation: can AI participate in a tradition where presence, ritual, embodiment, lineage, and teacher-student relationships matter? Chatbots can summarize doctrine. Religion is asking whether they can carry authority. (apnews.com)
• Jewish AI ethics is developing around agency, moral status, and responsibility. A 2026 paper on AI consciousness research proposes a Talmudic framework for graduated protections when an AI system’s moral status is uncertain. The paper argues that Talmudic scenario-based legal reasoning can help structure ethics protocols for entities whose status cannot yet be definitively established. This is a good example of religion contributing something more specific than “be ethical.” It brings a method of reasoning about ambiguity, personhood, obligation, and uncertain moral status. (arxiv.org)
• Islamic AI ethics is also moving from general values to normative frameworks. Recent Islamic AI ethics work examines AI through questions of justice, accountability, human dignity, moral responsibility, and ethical use. The Islamic frame is especially important because it is not merely individual belief applied to technology. It is a legal, moral, and civilizational tradition with developed methods for reasoning about human welfare, harm, obligation, and permissible use. The emerging question is how those categories apply when decision-making systems shape work, finance, warfare, communication, education, and social life. (researchgate.net)
Bottom Line
The Vatican’s new Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence, combined with Leo XIV’s forthcoming AI-focused encyclical, marks a serious institutional turn: the Catholic Church is making AI one of the defining moral and social questions of this papacy.
But the broader story is larger than Catholicism. Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and other traditions are beginning to apply their own moral, legal, ritual, and theological categories to artificial intelligence. That means the AI debate is expanding beyond labs and regulators into older institutions that have spent centuries thinking about personhood, authority, labor, responsibility, truth, and human dignity.
For builders, founders, and operators, the practical implication is simple: AI will not be judged only by whether it works. It will increasingly be judged by what view of the human person it assumes.