Vice President JD Vance told reporters at a White House press briefing on May 19 that he is "looking forward to reading" Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical on artificial intelligence, calling it a document that will carry real weight in the global debate over how the technology reshapes human life.

The encyclical, titled Magnifica humanitas, addresses the preservation of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. Pope Leo XIV signed it on May 15 and will formally present it in the Vatican's Synod Hall on May 25.

Vance, a Catholic convert with deep ties to the technology sector, used the briefing to outline the Trump administration's approach to AI while offering unusual deference to a papal teaching document that has not yet been published. The intersection of Washington policy and Catholic social doctrine on a question this consequential deserves close attention from anyone who cares about the dignity of the individual in an era of rapid technological change.

What Vance said at the White House

Vance did not pretend to know the encyclical's contents. But he made clear he expects it to matter. As the Catholic Herald reported, the vice president weighed in directly on the pope's authority to speak to the issue:

"I think when the Pope issues an encyclical on artificial intelligence, it's going to have some influence. I, of course, don't know how much influence. I don't know exactly what it's going to say, but I think when the leader of the world's largest Christian denomination speaks on an issue like that, it's certainly going to have some influence."

He followed that with a more personal note, acknowledging that he may not agree with everything in the document but signaling genuine respect for the exercise:

"I'm sure it will contain a lot of insights, some of which I'll probably agree with, some of which I may not, but I think that it's going to be a very, very important document."

That kind of candor, openly anticipating disagreement with a document he still calls important, is a welcome contrast to the usual Washington habit of either ignoring religious voices entirely or pretending to embrace them without reservation.

The Trump administration's AI stance

Vance used the same briefing to lay out where the administration stands. President Donald Trump, Vance said, "wants us to be pro-innovation" and "wants us to win the AI race against all other countries in the world." The vice president framed the challenge as both economic and military:

"He recognises that AI is going to be an important tool, not just for our economy, but for our military, and so he wants to ensure that we are winning that particular race. We also want to make sure that we're protecting people, we're protecting people's data, we're protecting people's privacy."

That balance, innovation and competition on one side, protection of citizens on the other, is the core tension in every serious AI policy conversation. Vance acknowledged as much, saying the administration believes it has "the right balance" but that the work is ongoing "because that's just the nature of these technologies: they certainly change."

The honesty about impermanence is worth noting. Washington rarely admits that a policy framework might need constant adjustment. On a technology moving this fast, that admission is more realistic than any five-year regulatory plan drafted by committee.

Why this encyclical carries historical weight

Pope Leo XIV chose his papal name deliberately. Shortly after his election in May 2025, the American-born pontiff told the College of Cardinals that he took the name in honor of Pope Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social disruptions of the Industrial Revolution and established foundational principles of Catholic social teaching.

The parallel is hard to miss. Rerum Novarum arrived when industrialization was upending labor, family life, and the relationship between workers and capital. Magnifica humanitas arrives as artificial intelligence threatens to do something similar, or something far more radical, to the nature of work, privacy, creativity, and even the definition of personhood.

Pope Leo XIV signed the new encyclical on May 15, which marked the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum. The timing was no accident. The document is expected to situate rapid technological development, particularly AI, within the Church's teaching on the dignity of the human person created in the image and likeness of God.

That framing, human dignity as the fixed point around which technology must orbit, not the other way around, is one that conservatives of all stripes should find congenial. It is the opposite of the Silicon Valley default, which tends to treat the human person as a variable to be optimized rather than a being with inherent worth.

Vance's tech-world roots

The vice president is not commenting from the outside. Vance first connected with Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, after a 2011 talk Thiel gave at Yale Law School. Thiel subsequently hired Vance as a partner at Mithril Capital and later provided approximately $15 million through the Protect Ohio Values super PAC to support Vance's successful 2022 Senate campaign in Ohio.

That background gives Vance unusual fluency in the language of the technology sector. It also makes his willingness to take a papal encyclical on AI seriously more significant than it would be from a politician with no skin in the game. Vance knows these companies. He knows the investors. He knows the ambitions driving the field.

Thiel himself has grappled publicly with the theological implications of technological acceleration. In a June 2025 interview with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, Thiel discussed what he described as "this radical transformation where your human, natural body gets transformed into an immortal body", the transhumanist vision, and acknowledged orthodox Christian critiques that such projects address the body but fall short in the necessary transformation of the soul. He also reflected on broader theological implications, including references to the figure of the Antichrist in relation to unchecked progress.

These are not fringe conversations. They are happening among the people building the technology. And they are exactly the kind of questions a papal encyclical is designed to address, not with policy specifics, but with a moral framework that predates Silicon Valley by two millennia.

The May 25 presentation

Pope Leo XIV will formally present Magnifica humanitas in the Vatican's Synod Hall on May 25, where he is expected to deliver remarks and a final blessing. Christopher Olah, co-founder of the AI company Anthropic, is expected to participate in the event, a signal that the Vatican is engaging directly with the industry rather than simply issuing pronouncements from a distance.

That engagement matters. Too often, religious and moral voices speak about technology without speaking to the people building it. Having an Anthropic co-founder at the presentation table suggests the Vatican understands that influence requires presence, not just authority.

What to watch for

The full text of Magnifica humanitas has not yet been released. What the encyclical says about data privacy, military applications of AI, the displacement of workers, and the boundaries of machine autonomy will determine whether it becomes a reference point in the policy debate or a document admired and shelved.

Vance's comments suggest the White House is paying attention. Whether the administration acts on whatever the encyclical recommends is a separate question. But the vice president's willingness to engage publicly with a Catholic teaching document on a subject this consequential, while simultaneously laying out a pro-innovation, pro-competition AI posture, reflects a seriousness that the debate badly needs.

The question artificial intelligence poses is not primarily technical. It is moral: What is a human being, and what do we owe each other in a world where machines can do more and more of what humans once did? The Church has been answering that question for centuries. Washington would do well to listen before it legislates.