Even before the election of the first American pope, Roman Catholic influence on U.S. tech and AI policy seldom, if ever, had been as strong as it is today among U.S. policymakers.
This should lead to greater cooperation between the United States and the Vatican on AI issues, ultimately making a better world. Catholic doctrine is wary of significant government intervention in the economy, and the church is facing persecution in China, America’s chief AI rival. This provides a solid foundation for the United States and the Vatican to work together, politically and morally.
Vice President JD Vance converted to Roman Catholicism in 2019, and a year later, he wrote a 7,000-word essay on the importance of his faith.
Andrew Ferguson, appointed by President Trump to be chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, the federal government’s arm for business competition, said, “My Catholic faith informs my understanding of the good. I orient my life around that understanding of the good.”
On May 9, The Wall Street Journal had a lengthy story on the significant influence of Patrick Deneen, a political philosopher at the University of Notre Dame, on the Trump administration. Gail Slater, the head of the antitrust division at the U.S. Department of Justice, delivered her policy-defining speech April 28 at Notre Dame Law School.
Pope Leo XIV, on May 10, said he chose his papal name because the issues of the current industrial revolution, driven by AI, present similar challenges to those of the last industrial revolution. Then, Leo XIII, a strident advocate for the working class, was pope.
Leo XIII categorically rejected socialism, saying in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, a foundation of modern Catholic teaching, “The main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected.” He added, “The great mistake … is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict.”
Building on Rerum Novarum, the church today teaches the doctrine of subsidiarity, which holds that “decisions in society need to be made at the lowest competent level,” according to CAPP-USA, an organization founded by Pope John Paul II. This pope, who knew the moral and economic horrors of communism in his native Poland, also said subsidiarity “insists on necessary limits to the State’s intervention … inasmuch as the individual, the family and society are prior to the state.”
On May 10, Leo XIV said, “The church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”
While AI presents vast opportunities and challenges, Leo XIV is aware that one of the greatest threats from AI could come from China gaining AI supremacy. He previously oversaw the appointment of bishops at the Vatican, a matter that has caused great friction with China. The crux of the dispute is that the Chinese communist government wants to name who will be bishops in the Catholic Church, and it has taken bold and aggressive actions to do so.
In 2018, Pope Francis entered into an agreement with the Chinese government, in which the church acquiesced and allowed seven bishops the communist government had appointed to remain in power, in return for more control over naming future bishops. Among those strongly critical of the agreement was practicing Catholic and then-Sen. Marco Rubio, now the secretary of state and who has three other positions in Trump’s administration.
Although the text of the agreement is not published, troubles persist. In October 2024, the Hudson Institute documented that seven bishops the Vatican has appointed have been arrested without cause, and three others persecuted. In the period after Francis’s death and before Leo XIV’s election, the Chinese government installed two bishops. Meanwhile, more than two dozen bishop positions in China remain vacant.
China is using AI to repress those aspiring to religious freedom in its country and other countries to which it exports this technology. At his Paris AI speech in February, Vance addressed this, saying, “Hostile foreign adversaries have weaponized AI software to rewrite history, surveil users and censor speech. … This administration will block such efforts, full stop.”
The United States and the Vatican should collaborate on AI policy, especially in relation to China, much as the two worked during the Cold War during the pontificate of John Paul II to confront the evils posed by the Soviet Union. Indeed, the biggest threat today to Leo’s well-founded concern for “human dignity, justice and labor” is China gaining AI supremacy.
Essential to deterring that threat and gaining the benefits of AI is having a robust private sector for AI investment and development, consistent with Catholic doctrine, and cooperation between the United States and the Vatican. This worked in the past to make the world a better place, and it is imperative to do so again.