Pope Leo XIV lays out his vision of the papacy and identifies AI as a main challenge for humanity

Vatican City | Pope Leo XIV laid out the vision of his papacy Saturday, identifying artificial intelligence as one of the most critical matters facing humanity and vowing to continue in some of the core priorities of Pope Francis.

In his first formal audience, Leo repeatedly cited Francis and the Argentine pope's own 2013 mission statement, making clear a commitment to making the Catholic Church more inclusive, attentive to the faithful and a church that looks out for the “least and rejected.”

Leo, the first American pope, told the cardinals who elected him that he was fully committed to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernised the church. He identified AI as one of the main issues facing humanity, saying it poses challenges to defending human dignity, justice and labour.

In another hint to his priorities, the Vatican revealed that Leo, a member of the Augustinian religious order, would retain the motto and coat of arms that he had as bishop of Chiclayo, Peru. The motto, “In Illo uno unum,” was pronounced by St Augustine in a sermon to explain that “although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one.”

Identifying with Pope Francis

Leo referred to AI in explaining the choice of his name: His namesake, Pope Leo XIII, was pope from 1878 to 1903 and laid the foundation for modern Catholic social thought.

He did so most famously with his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed workers' rights and capitalism at the dawn of the industrial age. The late pope criticised both laissez-faire capitalism and state-centric socialism, giving shape to a distinctly Catholic vein of economic teaching.

In his remarks Saturday, Leo said he identified with his predecessor, who addressed the great social question of the day posed by the industrial revolution in the encyclical.

“In our own day, the church offers everyone the treasury of its social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour,” he said.

Toward the end of his pontificate, Francis became increasingly vocal about the threats to humanity posed by AI and called for an international treaty to regulate it.

He warned that such powerful technology risks turning human relations into mere algorithms. Francis brought his message to the Group of Seven industrialised nations when he addressed their summit last year, insisting AI must remain human-centric so that decisions about when to use weapons or even less-lethal tools always remain made by humans and not machines.

The late Argentine pope also used his 2024 annual peace message to call for an international treaty to ensure AI is developed and used ethically, arguing that a technology lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness is too perilous to develop unchecked.

Francis in many ways saw the Chicago-born Augustinian missionary Robert Prevost as something of an heir apparent: He moved him to take over a small Peruvian diocese in 2014, where Prevost later became bishop and head of the Peruvian bishops conference, and then called him to Rome to take over one of the most important Vatican offices vetting bishop nominations in 2023.

In the speech, delivered in Italian in the Vatican's synod hall – not the Apostolic Palace – Leo made repeated references to Francis and the mourning over his death. He held up Francis' mission statement at the 2013 start of his pontificate, “The Joy of the Gospel,” as something of his own marching orders, suggesting he intends very much to continue in Francis' priorities.

He cited Francis' insistence on the missionary nature of the church and the need to make its leadership more collegial. He cited the need to pay attention to what the faithful say “especially in its most authentic and inclusive forms, especially popular piety.”

Again, referring to Francis' 2013 mission statement, Leo cited the need for the church to express “loving care for the least and rejected” and engage in courageous dialogue with the contemporary world.

A quick conclave

Greeted by a standing ovation as he entered, Leo read from his prepared text, only looking up occasionally. Even when he first appeared to the world on the loggia of St Peter's Basilica on Thursday night, Leo read from a prepared, handwritten text that he must have drafted sometime before his historic election or the hour or so after.

He seemed most comfortable, speaking off-the-cuff in the few words he pronounced in Spanish.

He was elected the 267th pontiff on Thursday on the fourth ballot of the conclave, an exceptionally fast outcome given this was the largest and most geographically diverse conclave in history and not all cardinals knew one another before arriving in Rome.

Cardinals have said Prevost did not make any major speech during the pre-conclave discussions, and he carried into the conclave the traditional taboo precluding a pope from the United States given America's superpower status.

But Prevost was already known to many of them given his decades as a missionary and then bishop in Peru, and had been the head of the Vatican's bishops office since 2023.

They said he made an impression in smaller groups where English was the key language of communication in a conclave that brought together 133 cardinals from 70 countries.

Madagascar Cardinal Desire Tsarahazana told reporters on Saturday that on the final ballot, Prevost had received “more” than 100 votes. That suggests an extraordinary margin, well beyond the two-thirds, or 89 votes, necessary to be elected.