Pope Leo XIV has warned that ‘humanity is slipping into a violent culture of power’ in his first major text amid his deepening rift with US President Donald Trump
The Pope has warned that the rapid development of AI could lead the world down a path of unending war – a stance that risks putting him in further conflict with the Donald Trump.
Pope Leo XIV urged governments to closely regulate the rapid development of AI in a sweeping manifesto released on Monday, at the same time as the US Government is aggressively pushing to deregulate the technology.
Leo warned that technological developments could spread misinformation, fuel conflict and said it was now “not permissible” to entrust AI systems with irreversible lethal decisions.
“What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating,” Leo wrote in the text, entitled “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), addressed to the Catholic Church’s 1.4 billion members.
Leo’s impassioned appeal comes amid his deepening rift with US President Donald Trump, triggered by the Pope’s critical stance of the US and Israeli war on Iran.
Tensions had been building for months between Trump and the first American Pope, but reached boiling point in April, with Senator John Kennedy condemning what he referred to as the president’s “holy war” against the Pope.
On April 7, Leo said Trump’s threats to destroy Iranian civilisation were “unacceptable” and that attacks on civilian infrastructure violated international law. He called on people around the world to urge their political representatives to bring an end to the war in the Middle East.
Five days later, Trump sparked backlash across the US political spectrum, including from some of his own supporters, when he posted – and later deleted – an AI-generated image depicting himself as a Jesus-like figure healing a sick man in a hospital bed.
Less than an hour before posting the image on April 12, Trump launched a tirade against the Pope on Truth Social, describing him as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy”.
He continued: “I donât want a Pope who thinks itâs OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I donât want a Pope who thinks itâs terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country.”
While Leoâs highly anticipated document focused on AI, it also condemned the number of brutal wars around the world, lamented the erosion of democracy and warned that profits from the arms industry were fuelling conflict.
“The past 60 years have been marked by conflicts of astonishing brutality, often affecting civilian populations on a massive scale,” Leo wrote in the English-language text. “Humanity is slipping into a violent culture of power, where peace no longer appears as a responsibility to be taken on, but as a fragile interval between conflicts.”
Leo also made one of the clearest statements yet from a pope repudiating the just war theory – a doctrine the Church has used since at least the fifth century to evaluate global conflicts.
The doctrine, which broadly states that wars â should only be waged in self-defence, has been invoked by Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, to defend the Iran war.
“The ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated,” Leo wrote. “The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.”
Leo also invoked his predecessor Leo XIII, who published a landmark encyclical in 1891 calling for better pay and conditions for labourers during the Industrial Revolution.
The Pope urged policymakers to protect workersâ rights and decried what he called “new forms of slavery” endured by factory workers producing technological devices, such as computers and smartphones, that are used for AI.
“In some regions of the world, children and adolescents work in dangerous conditions, crushing the materials from which rare earth elements are extracted,” the Pope said. “The bodies of these people are scarred, injured and worn down so that computational flow may continue uninterruptedly.”
Leo also acknowledged that the Catholic Church did not forcefully condemn transatlantic slavery until the 19th century and made a personal apology. “This constitutes a wound in Christian memory,” he wrote. “For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.”
