In 1891, Pope Leo XIII looked at the industrial revolution — factories, machines, workers being displaced and exploited — and decided the church had a role to play.

The result was an encyclical: “Rerum Novarum,” translated as “On New Things,” became one of the foundational documents of modern Catholic social teaching.

Now, 135 years later, another Pope Leo sees another technological revolution enveloping humanity: His first encyclical is about artificial intelligence.

The ethics of AI is not a question solely for engineers, investors, governments or Silicon Valley. It is a question for all of us about the human person.

So, today we begin there: with the document, the history behind it and the tension the Vatican is highlighting as we are barreling into the age of artificial intelligence.  

Technology is building machines that aspire to transcendence, while religion maintains that the divine is already present in fragile, embodied human life. 

Religion News Service Vatican correspondent Claire Giangravé has spent most of her waking hours in recent days with this encyclical and has been reporting on what it says, why it matters and what kind of future Pope Leo XIV is warning us not to sleepwalk into.