Bishop Leahy welcomes Pope's encyclical on AI
Bishop Leahy welcomes Pope's encyclical on AI
Society must insist on 'AI for good' - Bishop
Tuesday, 26 May 2026: Bishop of Limerick Brendan Leahy has welcomed Pope Leo's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas as a "wonderful resource for reflection" and said that AI must be for the "good of humanity and not for the gain of a few".
Responding to the Pope's encyclical, Bishop Leahy said that AI has the capacity to be as transformative for society but that there is a real risk of it also being exploited and not for humankind's betterment.
"We all know we are on the cusp of a profound epoch-making shift in humanity. The rapid expansion of digitalisation, artificial intelligence and robotics will have an increasingly profound impact on social structures, decision-making processes and the collective consciousness" he said.
"It has enormous potential for positive advancement, but it has the potential to be destructive. As Pope Leo said, 'never before has humanity had so much power over itself' but there are huge risks attached to this. So, it is essential that AI is regulated quickly and carefully adopted so that it is for the good of wider humanity and not for the gain of a few. If it is not, there's a real risk it will get away from us in society and do untold damage in the process. As Pope Leo alluded to, there is a real risk it will exaggerate the inequality of the world so, therefore, it must have guiderails."
Pope Leo was joined at the launch of his encyclical by Christopher Olah, co-founder of leading AI lab Anthropic, whose presence, Bishop Leahy said, was a clear signal around the ethical concerns with AI. "Christopher Olah has made it clear that there is a need for oversight from religious leaders, governments and civil society around the development of AI and that there is a real possibility that AI will impact human labour. We are already seeing that happen in Ireland, no doubt, too, in Limerick.
"Pope Leo recognised that technological development itself is good as an expression of human creativity, but he warned against the risk of a technocratic paradigm becoming dominant in humanity, one that reduces reality to what is measurable, calculable and functionally more and more perfect.
"He reminded us in the encyclical that 'artificial intelligences do not experience life, do not possess a body, do not experience joy and pain, and do not know from within what love, work and responsibility mean'. In other words, AI cannot assume moral responsibility nor understand the ultimate meaning of the decisions they help to generate. There is a risk that we forget how much limitations, vulnerability and relationships are authentic expressions of humanity," he said.
Bishop Leahy also underlined some of the principles set out by Pope Leo - above all, "the need to protect the human person and to place the dignity of the human person at the centre as the criteria for guiding technical progress."
"We must also always remember that digital transformation is not neutral. In the digital ecosystem, it is all too easy to spread manipulated information, alter images and polarise narratives, all of which risks blurring the boundaries between true and false."
"Pope Leo, in the encyclical, recalled for Christians their vocation to build a civilisation of love. He concluded his letter by outlining the choice facing humanity today: to be builders of communion or architects of another tower of Babel.
"Here at home in Limerick, in Ireland we must come together across government, academia and, indeed, faiths to ensure that we do whatever we can to make sure we influence AI in the right way rather than it influencing us as a society in the wrong way."