The Pope, Gandalf, and the Disarming of AI
The leader of the Catholic Church released his first encyclical today — 40,000 words on artificial intelligence — and he led with a Gandalf quote.
Let that settle for a second.
Pope Leo XIV titled his document Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”). He signed it on May 15, the anniversary of Rerum Novarum — the 1891 encyclical that basically wrote Catholic social teaching on labor and capital. 135 years later, he’s updating it for what he calls the res novae of our time: AI. And he’s not playing defense.
He calls for AI to be “disarmed.”
He knows the word is strong. He says so explicitly in the text. But he argues this moment needs words that wake people up — “capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences, and indicating paths forward.” Fair. When was the last time a headline about AI regulation made you stop scrolling?
The encyclical takes shots in every direction that deserves one. Autonomous weapons. Data colonialism. The hoarding of algorithms, platforms, and patents as “new forms of property.” He calls health data the new “rare earths” — extracted from vulnerable populations under the guise of aid, then used to train models that decide who matters and who doesn’t.
His line about data colonialism is the sharpest thing in it: “The digital age will not be post-colonial, but colonial in another form.”
That’s not a church talking. That’s someone who’s been paying attention.
But here’s the part I actually respect: he doesn’t fall into the Luddite trap. The Vatican rolled out an AI translation system for St. Peter’s this spring — 60 languages, live, on your phone. He’s not against the technology. He’s against the power structure growing up around it.
And he takes a swing at the “intelligence” framing that the entire industry uses to sell itself. AI systems, he writes, “do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship, or responsibility mean.” Elevating raw reasoning above everything else, he argues, makes humans “more isolated and more vulnerable to being dominated.”
The Gandalf reference? That’s not a gimmick. It’s a signal. He’s telling the tech elite — many of whom grew up on Tolkien — that there are things too important to be left to the powerful alone. That some doors stay shut. That some forces, however impressive, don’t get to decide the shape of everything.
You don’t have to be Catholic to find this interesting. You just have to be tired of the same handful of corporations deciding what intelligence is, who has it, and what it’s for.
The Pope says mere regulation is insufficient. I think he’s right.
The question is whether anyone with actual power is listening.
Sources: Ars Technica — “Citing Gandalf, Pope Leo says we must ‘disarm’ AI”, NBC News — Pope Leo issues new warning on AI, The Verge — Pope Leo calls for being ‘profoundly human’ in the age of AI