Tech bros, clutch your crosses. Last Monday, Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in The Time of Artificial Intelligence. The 42,300 word, pro-human document has taken the world by storm—especially in Silicon Valley.
Christopher Hale, Publisher of Letters From Leo, joins Tim to unpack the shockwaves sent out by Pope Leo’s first major theological text. The two also discuss Peter Theil’s bizarre rants on the Antichrist, the Pope bringing the builders of AI into the discussion, and the Church’s apology for its role in the Transatlantic trade slave.
Head to https://standwithpopeleo.com/ai/ to get a breakdown of the Magnifica Humanitas.
Christopher Hale is the author of the Letters From Leo substack. Hale is a political consultant and politician from Tennessee and was previously Catholic nonprofit executive. He helped lead faith outreach for President Barack Obama.
The transcript below has been edited for formatting purposes.
Tim Dickinson
Hi, this is Tim Dickinson for The Contrarian. Our guest today is Christopher Hale, who publishes the Substack Letters from Leo about our American Pope, and we’ll be talking about today the Pope and AI and the moral oversight of technology. How you doing today, Christopher?
Christopher Hale
I’m well, thank you so much for having me, I appreciate being on the show.
Tim Dickinson
So, the Pope has put out this encyclical about AI, and what is the basic thrust of that project?
Christopher Hale
Sure. Well, so an encyclical is a letter that the Pope writes to, historically, the Catholic faithful, but in the past 40, 50 years, it’s really extended out to be a letter to the entire world. It really represents kind of a governing agenda of what the Pope thinks matters most in the world. And Pope Leo XIV took his name after Pope Leo XII, who wrote the most famous papal social encyclical of all time, Rerum Novarum, which was about labor and capital in the context of the Industrial Revolution. He wrote that in 1891, and of course, the steam engine was the big issue in global economics in 1891, and Pope Leo XIV thinks that the biggest issue today is artificial intelligence, in fact. So he thinks that we’ve entered what he calls, really, the fourth industrial revolution here, and he wants to, from this document, put it in the centerpiece of artificial intelligence, this idea that artificial intelligence should never dominate, but be at service of the human person.
And then one final thing, really after Rerum Novarum, Rerum Novarum really served in 1891 as the intellectual birthplace, what for what would become labor unions, the 40-hour work week, weekends, in fact, and social movements, to the like. And so what we really see with Pope Leo XIV is, I think, his imagination, his hope. is that this new document, Magnifica Humanitas, The Magnificent Humanity, can lead to such social movements today, in fact.
Tim Dickinson
Well, and it’s really interesting that this is clearly, something that the Pope has had in mind, right, from the choosing of the name Leo, and modeling himself after that, message to society, right? That we need to renew that kind of message in this moment. What are the calls that he is making vis-a-vis AI? What is he saying the dangers are, and what is the human response to that? How do we preserve the common good in this era of rising technological dominance?
Christopher Hale
For sure. He really articulates this to, really, three communities. First, to Washington and Brussels, to the governments around the world, he says you need to take an active role in regulating artificial intelligence. I think he would have been disappointed just days before this document dropped, President Trump rescinded or didn’t sign an executive order that had been planned that has these very basic guardrails when a artificial intelligence company puts puts in place a new language model. It asks for a period of review by the federal government, and Trump struck that down based on the influence of his former AI czar, David Sachs, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and others. Leo wants the government to take a significant charge in regulating artificial intelligence.
Perhaps the most peculiar part is he’s talking to builders themselves, the AI companies themselves. Really, Leo XII, and really the predecessors of Leo XIV, didn’t talk so much to industry in terms of self-regulation, but Leo acknowledges that governments alone cannot do it. These systems are so powerful that he really wants to involve the builders of artificial intelligence, and you might have noted that in that room, with him co-presenting the document was, in fact, Christopher Ola, who was one of the co-founders of Anthropic. The Vatican’s been doing this outreach to Silicon Valley for a decade now, and not everyone’s played ball, quite frankly, at the Vatican. I’ve been seeing this in the flesh, in my own experience, but really, Entropic did. They did take the Vatican’s concerns about ethics and artificial intelligence seriously. Some might fight about how much they did, but it was definitely more than their competitors did. And so, Pope Leo XIV wants Silicon Valley to self-regulate, to be thoughtful in the building of its artificial intelligence structures.
And finally, he spoke to you and I, the consumers. He really wants consumers of technology, be mindful consumers of technology. Hopefully the 14 is not a Luditte. In fact, he’s the first pope to have a cell phone. He’s the first pope to send an email. I have his email address. He doesn’t always respond to me, unfortunately. And he’s also the first pope to have a smartwatch, an Apple Watch, in fact. So he’s not writing, from a distance. He understands the technological revolution that we’re in, in the flesh, and he wants us to be more mindful in our consumption. And what he says, I think is so beautiful, is he says that there needs to be parts of life That are technology-free, that are measurement-free, and he encourages us to refine the art of, quote, wasting time with others.
Tim Dickinson
Well, it’s kind of beautiful in this, in this day and age. I was struck by his call to disarm AI, and he seemed to have a dual message there. One is, you know, the AI is increasingly involved in weapon systems, so it’s actually an instrument of war, potentially, currently. But then also this sort of arms race between the AI companies that they are pushing forward with the technology so quickly, so sort of heedlessly, and not focusing on the larger social issues and potential dangers of AI. So can you talk a bit about what his message about disarmament was?
Christopher Hale
For sure, I think you hit the nail on the head with both examples. When Pope Leo XIV was elected Pope on May 8, 2025, he comes to the Loggia St. Peter’s Square. I was there in the Loggia, just feet away from him, and what he said, what he called for in that moment, was a, quote, disarming and unarmed peace. And I just want to play out those two words, because it matters to understand how Leo sees the world. an unarmed piece, so I do not come into the room with weapons, but it’s also disarming. It’s a piece that disarms someone else, and I think a close reader, a close listener might ask, how does one disarm something without carrying arms themselves. And that’s really the Christian miracle. That’s the argument of the Christian theology of a disarming, unarmed peace.
And so Leo believes in that peace. And so I think he is asking for a disarmed AI, but noteworthy, Leo XIV himself does not carry any kind of temporal weapons. He cannot, he cannot sanction artificial intelligence, he cannot levy fines on artificial intelligence. Really, the only appeal that he has to these companies is the moral force of the Catholic Church, but I think it is quite a force to be reckoned with. Just as he cannot do temporal sanctions on artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence, Silicon Valley, cannot deal with Leo XIV the ways it deals with politicians. They can’t fund them. They can’t impeach him, they can’t vote to remove him from office, they can’t put a tariff upon them, they can’t indict them.
And so I think he represents a type of currency that Silicon Valley is not used to playing ball with, and Pope Leo XIV’s influence over American consumers surpasses anything Silicon Valley could dream of. So we’ll find out if that soft power the Vatican has, that Pope Leo XIV 14 tabs actually has real temporal, real hard power to it, and can really force the hands of these companies to change. I think the fact that Christopher Owl was in the room when this document was presented means that some in Silicon Valley are taking this seriously.
Tim Dickinson
I was raised in Silicon Valley, and I’ve never experienced a technological push that was really so much of a push. It’s like, this is inevitable, this is happening, you better just get used to it, nothing’s gonna stop this runaway freight train. And the Pope… is using moral suasion to say, wait a minute, we need to think about the impacts of this. We need to think about the common good as we are, you know, pursuing a technology that, in some ways reinforces hierarchies or reinforces dominance. And so I find, you know, as a consumer of this technology who’s not very, just not on board with the runaway freight train, I find it, not as a Catholic, but just as a person of this world, very comforting that there’s sort of an adult in the room saying, we need to talk about the human element as we’re pursuing this technological wonder.
Christopher Hale
And I think, he’s, quite frankly, ahead of politicians on this. I think that that’s what’s striking, is the Catholic Church, I am a Catholic, we’re not exactly known for being cutting edge, being on top of things, it takes us a little bit of time, perhaps, to catch up to the ways and the knowledge of the secular world. If you think about it, Pope Louis XII writes Rheum the Barum in 1891. Well, that was really in the midst of the Second Industrial Revolution, quite a ways into it, really a century after the Industrial Revolution really began, before he used the power and the force of the church to comment on it. I even think of Benedict XVI, he wrote on the ethics of the finances and the financial crisis, and summer of 2009, really 18 months after the crisis had hit the world. And Pope Francis, his immediate predecessor, wrote on climate change, the Laudato si n 2015, really a generation after it had become a major political issue, both here in the United States and around the globe. Leo XIV is on the cutting edge of this. He’s talking about this pretty early on in the Revolution, at least in terms of Catholic, the Catholic tradition.
And that leads, I think, a really profound situation. Christopher Olah said that, during this presentation with Pope Leo XIV, that Silicon Valley is building what it does not know. And so it’s interesting because Leo XIV is writing about what we do not know is to come. So it’s a… it’s a gamble of sorts. It’ll be interesting to read this document in 10 years and see if Leo XIV was prescient on the concerns he talks about. But what he’s saying is the Catholic Church should be a voice in the room. And here’s what I’ll say. I think that what I’m seeing is that a lot of the pushback against artificial intelligence in this country is lacking a moral grammar, a cohesive moral grammar, and Leo XIV, I think, provides that. As you most… as you noted, it precedes religion. It’s a language that can be taken up by secular movements across this country, and I think that when you start seeing these pushbacks, particularly against data centers this summer into the fall. you’re gonna start seeing Leo XIV’s language being used in these campaigns.
Tim Dickinson
And I don’t want to put them on an equivalence, because they’re obviously very different individuals, but Peter Thiel looms large in this debate, right, as somebody who’s pushing very hard on this technology, and also has very sort of strange ideas about religion, and a very, you know, influence over J.D. Vance, who’s got a strain of Catholicism that’s quite different from the message that Pope Leo is putting out. So can you talk to us a bit… just a bit about that tension between the Leo philosophy and the Peter Thiel, movement, which obviously has a lot of money behind it.
Christopher Hale
Absolutely. So just step back about a year. Peter Theil, for about a year in public sphere, has been talking about the Antichrist, which is a notion, a fringe notion in Christianity. It didn’t really get big play in Catholicism. Some forms of evangelical Protestantism with it up, but even very small there. And he… the Antichrist is basically someone who will act as if they are Christ, but in a deceptive way, actually lead to to the destruction of the world. And Peter Thiel says very strangely that anyone who opposes the unadulterated growth of artificial intelligence is actually a tool of the Antichrist. And so, maybe somewhat unsurprisingly, as Pope Leo made it clear throughout this past year that this is going to be a big issue that he focuses on. In some of these anti-Christ lectures, Peter Thiel has name-checked, Pope Leo XIV as a tool of the Antichrist, suggesting he’s a tool of the Antichrist, and his biggest fear, which I find remarkable, is an AOC presidency filled with what he calls a woke American Pope, really a left-wing movement in his mind, that will stop the growth of artificial intelligence.
I’ll just say this, I think, just in terms of power, in terms of authority, if you are… if you are a developer, a funder of this technology that will displace millions of Americans, likely, and there’s someone speaking out against this, you don’t want the pitch force going towards you. So I think it strikes me as a preemptive move to say, actually, no, it’s these guys’ fault instead. Here’s the issue. Pope Leo XIV, like his predecessor, is very popular, Pope Francis, but Pope Francis was particularly popular with progressives, a little less so with conservatives. Leo enjoys significantly high ratings above both communities. He’s much more popular, Peter Thiel, he’s much more popular in Silicon Valley, and he, in fact, outlast Silicon Valley, so I think they have a long-term issue. And I’ll say one final thing here on this. In Christian theology, in Jewish theology, the original sin comes from the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve famously are tempted by the snake with the promises to be greater than God. To replace God. I think that’s actually a good way of understanding the original sin of Peter Thiel, the original sin of Silicon Valley. I think at their core, a lot of these folks think they are recreating God, and they are acting in God, and the consequences be damned. And Leo XIV’s calling that out.
Tim Dickinson
I study a lot of, Christian nationalist veins in our politics, and I see a trend in Christianity towards this sort of high control, patriarchy, hierarchy, you know, even to the Hegseth model, where God is guiding our bombs against our enemies and smiting them down. And I was reading this, encyclical, and the… The contrast there of understanding the equal dignity of all human beings, sort of a post-nationalist vision for the world. I’m not sure it’s actually post-nationalist, but an idea that every human being is worthy of dignity and love and willed solidarity in the eyes of God. And so, I wonder if you can talk about a bit about that tension within Christianity right now, and where Pope Leo sees the need to move.
Christopher Hale
Sure, and I always say this to my Catholic friends on the right, I think this is 100% true. Christian nationalism is really a misnomer. At its core, Christian nationalism is white evangelical nationalism. Let me put a little bit more meat on that. I think that the folks who are espousing Christian nationalism actually have no room in their movement for Catholics like me. I think we fall out outside of their understanding of what it means to be a Christian, to put it very frank. They don’t think that we achieve salvation, that we, in fact, are not Christian. And so, it’s not surprising to me to see Leo speak in such a way, that, I think indirectly is a counterpunch to these movements. He says something I think that’s really profound. He says, in the Christian understanding of the world, truth is not something to be possessed or defended, like a sacred object. It’s something to be shared, and to be given out. And I think that’s a really good understanding of the world.
I’ll speak religiously for a second. To be a Christian is to be a receiver, a recipient of good news. And good news ought to be shared. It’s not something that we beat someone over the head with, it’s not something we use to harm. It’s not something we use to castigate others, it’s something we use because it’s a gift that we’ve received and we want to share with others. I think that language is… will really go a long way. If you’re a Christian, if you’re a Catholic, and you’re concerned about these right-wing strands of nationalism, I think defiling our faith, I think you have a champion in Pope Leo XIV, and maybe a vocabulary, once again on how to oppose this.
Tim Dickinson
The last thing I wanted to ask you about, and this kind of pops up in the encyclical, is an apology for slavery from the church. And I’m sort of interested in sort of untangling this connection between why is that in there, right? Is this the idea that AI could somehow be part of a new enslavement, or… I just wondered what your thoughts are on that, and why you think that Leo chose this document to make a really profound apology for the church’s past involvement in slavery, or making excuses for slavery.
Christopher Hale
I think you actually answered the question the way you framed it. I think that if he has just simply connected slavery to artificial intelligence, it would have just simply kind of fallen away as, an extravagant, fallacious claim. But the fact that he apologized, really the first pope to apologize particularly for transatlantic slavery, popes apologized in general for slavery, but particularly to apologize for transatlantic slavery. on this, the 250th anniversary of our country, which was, of course, so much infused and built on slavery, he put it front and center.
That was the headline that the Associated Press ran with on Monday when this document came out. So I think by apologizing for it, he puts this at the forefront of our mind to say, exactly as you mentioned, that he is fearful that artificial intelligence will lead to new forms of slavery, to new forms of indentured servitude and the like, and he is concerned. We saw that with the Industrial Revolution, of course, in our own country, in many ways, and in many ways, only, I would say, mechanized and synchronized slavery in the South. And so he is afraid that it can be used in a way to lubricate new forms of slavery in our own country, and to make them go out faster.
Tim Dickinson
And the one, which, of course, yes. Do you have any closing thoughts that you want to make sure our listeners come away with today?
Christopher Hale
Sure. It’s a long document, it’s 42,000 words. I just encourage two paragraphs for you. Paragraph 120, he talks about, what it means to be a human being. And he says that, in paragraph 120, he says that oftentimes, there is this promise of Silicon Valley that we can overcome our limitations, overcome our sufferings. And he says, to be a human person. is to, in fact, suffer. And we shouldn’t be afraid of our suffering, because suffering is a part of what it is to experience love. And so he says, don’t be afraid of your suffering, don’t be afraid of your limitations, find grace in them, find import in them, and find what it means to be a human in them.
And then the second thing is paragraph 220, very easy to remember, 120 and 220. He gives, I would just say, a very simple framework, as I mentioned before. On how to exercise from this new perspective. Quoting Pope Francis, he says, let’s learn to waste time again with our children. Let’s learn to waste time with our friends. Let’s learn to waste time with our neighbors, and in fact, strangers. Everything’s mechanized, everything’s measured, and everything that can be measured can be controlled. Let’s find areas of our lives that cannot be measured, not be controlled, and in fact, the areas that give us the most profound meaning in life. I have a simple website that’ll help you read the sense cynical, it’s not always… the value has always been out in the best sources, but if you go to standwithpopelio.com slash AI, I give you a nice reader, it’s all free, some graphics to go along so you can understand this document in full if you don’t have time to delve into the 42,000-word document.
Tim Dickinson
Well, Christopher, this has been a great conversation. Thanks so much for your time today.
Christopher Hale
Thank you for having me.
Tim Dickinson
Take care.
