The Catholic Church rarely co-produces policy documents with Silicon Valley AI companies. Pope Leo XIV is changing that.
The newly elected Pope is collaborating with an Anthropic co-founder on a formal church text addressing human dignity and artificial intelligence. The Vatican has not released a timeline or confirmed which co-founder is involved, but the collaboration itself is notable: rather than issuing AI ethics guidance from a distance, Pope Leo is working directly with one of the industry's leading safety-focused companies to shape the document's content.
This isn't the Vatican's first engagement with AI. Pope Francis signed the "Rome Call for AI Ethics" in 2020 alongside IBM and Microsoft executives, and Vatican researchers published detailed guidance on algorithmic ethics in 2023. Pope Leo is extending that work - with more direct industry involvement than his predecessor managed.
For Anthropic, the partnership fits the company's broader positioning. Anthropic has consistently framed its work around building AI systems that are safe and beneficial for humanity - language that maps more naturally onto moral and philosophical frameworks than typical tech company messaging. A collaboration with religious leadership gives those safety arguments a different kind of credibility than academic partnerships or government testimony.
A formal Vatican document on AI carries real weight. With 1.4 billion Catholics worldwide and significant Catholic political influence in Latin America, southern Europe, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, official church positions on technology shape policy conversations in ways that most ethics papers don't reach. Legislators in heavily Catholic countries are likely to cite whatever this document concludes.
No publication date has been announced.