Why the Catholic Church Is AI Doom’s Most Formidable Foe

The church has some experience with millenarian cults. Pope Leo XIV on May 25, 2026. (Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP via Getty Images) Turn any article into a podcast. Upgrade now to start listening. Members can share articles with friends & family to bypass the paywall. Earlier this year, the cherub-faced technologist Christopher Olah led a delegation of Silicon Valley executives into the ancient halls of the Vatican to speak at the launch of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical. Titled Magnifica Humanitas, the document was a sweeping defense of the biological human being in the age of artificial intelligence. Claire Lehmann is a contributing writer at The Dispatch and the founding editor of Quillette. More on AI