Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, offers a myriad of moral lessons that speak directly to our modern informational and technological age. It’s a rigorous attempt to apply church doctrine to the growing impact of artificial intelligence on people, general well-being, as well as the teachings of the Catholic Church.
Now, papal documents are subject to intense debate, scrutiny, and interpretation, for Catholics and non-Catholics. But there’s at least one section that I believe deserves some highlighting, especially for those of us who believe in the positive and beneficial arc of technological progress.
A look to the Church’s tech posture
The paragraphs of note are housed within the section on the “Principle of the Universal Destination of Goods,” found in the chapter of the evolving Social Doctrine of the Church.
The Pope prefaces this section by invoking the Church’s definition of the “common good,” mentioning the network of social good that benefits humanity based on both individual and shared actions. Most of that is based on having a shared vision and respect for individual dignity.
The part that speaks the most to those of us who care about tech innovation is the following:
Today, among the goods that are universally intended for everyone, we must also include new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure and data. In a context where the wealth of nations depends increasingly on knowledge and technology, when these goods remain concentrated in the hands of a few, without adequate forms of sharing and access, a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods. In turn, it widens the gap between the included and the excluded, between those who can participate in the digital revolution and those who remain on the margins. Furthermore, care for our common home and our responsibility toward the poor and future generations require that the use of the goods of creation and the new possibilities offered by technology be regulated in such a way as to respect the environment, avoid waste and prevent new forms of exploitation.
–Pope Leo XIV, “The principle of the universal destination of goods,” in Magnifica Humanitas, encyclical letter, May 15, 2026, para. 65-67, Vatican.
Now, there are many ways to interpret this. The previous paragraphs underscore the Church’s view that private property itself is important, though not inviolable. Fair enough. Some may view this paragraph as somehow opposed to intellectual property rights as a while, especially those on innovative technologies, but that is too far of a leap to take.
What should concern us is not about who owns a particular technology, but rather those who are able to access it.
Sure, there is an “imbalance” created between civilizations or peoples that have access to technology first and foremost and the rest, just as there was between civilizations that first procured weapons to dominate their neighbors or mechanized agriculture to more efficiently farm the land. The owners in those revolutions become dominant, but they also brought great societal wealth.
Thinking beyond just these examples, the broader message here is also about access to that technology and the form it is offered in.
Technology has never been more acccessible
To casual observers of the growth of artificial intelligence, things may seem out of reach. New models released everyday among the tech elite out of only a few industries and cities, supercomputers burning watts in large warehouse data centers, and millions uncertain about what all this will mean for their ability to earn a wage in the future.
Thankfully, though, all of that growth and competition for tech and AI are not being churned out just for a few elite who may be in Silicon Valley. It’s for the many. And it’s getting better everyday.
The computers and apps that use these AI models are not locked away in billionaire compounds, but they’re actually readily available to anyone with a mobile phone or internet connection. Apps like ChatGPT or Google Gemini can be downloaded and used for free. A simple user account grants you access to dozens of different models and AI tools without ever submitting a credit card or payment.
Whatever you may think of the largest shareholders of the public or private companies offering AI tools, they use the same software and devices as an oil rig worker in Louisiana or a teacher in California. Phones, laptops, tablets, and smart TVs may range in price, but the experience is relatively universal and cost efficient.
Every existing app or digital service is integrating AI features at a rapid clip, satiating consumer demand for better, faster, and more accurate experiences to improve their lives.
Though this revolution in AI is in its infancy, we already know the tangible gains being made in biomedicine, mathematics, food science, education, transportation, manufacturing, and more. And these are gains that will be put into use throughout the supply chain, benefiting consumers all along the way.
The Pope writes “in a context where the wealth of nations depends increasingly on knowledge and technology…a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods”. But how is that imbalance not already addressed by the universal distribution of technology at cheaper and more affordable prices that are increasingly egalitarian in access?
The Church’s worries are important to consider, and do speak to ensuring that accessibility remains universal, but we can easily see where that is already being achieved.
The gains of open-source
Included within the existing scale of AI production are several Large-Language Models and applications and have been provided to anyone as open-source products, not just within apps with paid tiers or user logins, but for everyone.
In practice, that means that anyone in the world with an internet connection and enough data can downloaded a fully-trained AI model that can run a full suite of capabilities on devices and equipment they already own. Seriously. Anyone can go to Hugging Face right now, download a model, pick a harness or app to run it, and get started.
As I’ve written previously, open-source is for everyone, even your adversaries.
Some of these latest open source products that have reached sublime benchmarks are Moonshot’s Kimi K2.6, Z.AI’s GLM-5.1, and even Google’s latest Gemma model. Add this to Mistral’s Large 3 model and Meta’s Llama family of models that were first open-sourced nearly 3 years ago and were already put to use by thousands of businesses and individuals for their own use.
The benefits of open source models like these are that they provide solid foundations for all other types of innovations or applications to build on. They represent quite literally a universal destination of goods. And this is only in the strict sense that the code bases are free to download, modify, and share.
The strategy for offering an open-source AI product may be different for every company or group of researchers and technologists, and that’s a good thing.
Geopolitical strategists may warn about adopting Chinese-made open-source models, while some people remain suspicious of Big Tech models from Google and Meta. But the best answer to that skepticism is that these models offer you the ability to read the code and inspect it yourself. And if you can’t inspect it yourself, there are millions of more qualified coders and programmers who have every selfish reason to do it and publish the results.
With these tools available for free, what would the Church say about the distribution of these goods and services? What better way to assuage the doubts and fears of so many who discount AI than point to the realtime accessibility of open-source models to every human on the planet, despite their nationality or income? In a way, this section of AI development is hewing incredibly close to the Church’s own doctrine in how this technology is offered, and that should be recognized.
Is Pope Leo running his own Google Gemma or Kimi instance on the Vatican’s computers, using his own agentic model of choice? With today’s open-source tools, and the immense curiosity of scholars in the Holy See, I don’t see why not.
The closed-source counterargument
The detractors will claim that the real innovations are happening in the closed-source models offered by frontier model companies, like Codex or Claude offered by OpenAI and Anthropic. And that’s likely true, for now.
But access to these tools are not guarded by 100-foot iron gates or nation-state armies, but rather affordable monthly subscriptions that anyone can reasonably try with a single click.
Though the Pope speaks of an imbalance between “those who can participate in the digital revolution and those who remain on the margins,” the truth is that the existing paradigm has allowed everyone to participate. The promulgation of open-source technology has guaranteed accessibility and universality, while the benefits of the entire sector will continue to diffuse through every aspect of our economy and our social lives.
The Vatican’s view on AI is rather positive throughout Pope’s document, especially when we consider previous church teachings when faced with new or radical change, and we should appreciate this. We should also appreciate that the current arc of progress in tech innovation, which relies on open-source and open distribution, means that consumers are the first to gain.
One of the planet’s most important religious leaders has created a positive moral framework for AI and the next generation. It’s nowhere near a tech optimist manifesto, but the Pope’s encyclical is a reminder that AI is, first and foremost, a human creation. And one that will great dividends for humanity. Hallelujah!