The Vatican’s AI Blueprint: How Rome Quietly Built the World’s Most Thoughtful Ethics Code for Machines

When Pope Francis rose to speak at the G7 summit in June 2024, the world wasn't expecting a crash course in artificial intelligence. Heads of state leaned forward, translators clicked on, and the pontiff—white-robed among a sea of dark suits—began warning about algorithms.

"We would condemn humanity to a future without hope," he said, "if we took away people's ability to make decisions about themselves and their lives." It sounded dramatic, even poetic, but it wasn't off-the-cuff. Inside the Vatican, that moment had been five years in the making. A handful of priests, engineers, ethicists, and data scientists had been meeting quietly since 2019, wrestling with a question that Silicon Valley rarely pauses long enough to ask: what is intelligence actually for?

As governments scrambled to regulate and companies rushed to deploy, the Church—often portrayed as slow and ancient—was quietly constructing something radical in its simplicity: a moral framework for AI that puts the human person, not the machine, at the center.

The Call from Rome When I first started following the Vatican's tech initiatives, I assumed they'd be symbolic—perhaps a few panels, some lofty language about "ethics in the digital age." What I found instead was a genuine intellectual project unfolding behind the Leonine walls.

The Church has always had an uneasy relationship with science, but it's also been part of the conversation longer than most people realize. It runs one of the world's oldest astronomical observatories. It funds genetic research. It sends priests who are also physicists into academic conferences. So when AI began disrupting economies and ethics alike, the Vatican didn't see it as alien territory; it saw it as a pastoral problem in a new language.

The key player turned out to be Fr. Paolo Benanti, a soft-spoken Franciscan friar who also happens to hold a PhD in engineering ethics. Benanti became the Pope's unofficial technology whisperer—half monk, half systems theorist. "The Church asks a different set of questions," he told me when we spoke. "Not Can we build this? or Will it be profitable? but Should we build it? and Who does it serve?"

Those questions eventually coalesced into a sweeping document released in early 2025: Antiqua et Nova—"Old and New." The title captured what the Vatican was trying to do: bring ancient moral reasoning to the newest frontier of human invention.

The Big Idea: Machines That Think—but Don't Understand The first surprise in the Vatican's framework is its refusal to flatter the machines. "Artificial intelligence," it says, is a misnomer. The Church's starting premise is almost cheeky: AI isn't actually intelligent.

That single distinction changes everything. When we call an algorithm "smart," we start trusting it as if it were human—forgetting that behind every dataset is a designer with biases, assumptions, and blind spots. The Vatican warns that language itself can become an idol: once you anthropomorphize code, you start surrendering moral responsibility to it.

Real intelligence, the Church argues, includes qualities that no model can imitate—love, conscience, empathy, the ability to sacrifice, and the search for meaning. As one section of Antiqua et Nova puts it, "Processing is not understanding. Calculation is not wisdom. Optimization is not love."

You can train a model on a billion love letters, but it still doesn't know what love is. And that simple insight forms the backbone of the Vatican's approach to every ethical question that follows.

The Five Pillars Over five years of workshops and consultations, the Vatican distilled its thinking into five principles. They read less like commandments and more like reminders of what civilization tends to forget when dazzled by new toys.

Dignity First Every moral question, the Church insists, starts with the human person. When Pope Francis spoke at an early tech conference back in 2019—"Child Dignity in the Digital World"—he warned that digital systems could either elevate or degrade us.

The Vatican's ethicists applied that same test to AI. Does a system respect the person, or reduce them to data? Facial-recognition networks that track populations, predictive algorithms that deny jobs or healthcare, emotion-scanning tools used in classrooms—all, they say, risk treating humans as inputs instead of subjects.

The Church isn't against automation; it's against humiliation. "Technology should expand human capability, not erase human judgment," one Vatican official told me.

The Common Good over Corporate Gain By 2025, even the Vatican's patience was wearing thin with Big Tech. In one of its sharpest statements yet, the Church warned of "the concentration of power over mainstream AI applications in the hands of a few entities."

This wasn't anti-capitalism; it was moral realism. A handful of companies now decide what news billions of people see, what products they buy, and what information they never encounter. "Such entities, motivated by their own interests," the document cautions, "possess the capacity to manipulate consciences and the democratic process."

Francis has called for an international treaty to govern AI—something like a digital Geneva Convention built on human rights rather than market share. Whether or not world leaders will sign such a pact, the Church has thrown down a challenge: if the tools shaping civilization are privately owned, who speaks for the public good?

Relationships Can't Be Automated This is where the Vatican's critique turns tender. Machines can calculate, but they can't care. In education, an AI tutor might boost test scores, but it can't form character. In healthcare, a diagnostic model can catch tumors early, but it can't hold a patient's hand.

Francis warned of an "algorithmic society" where people become trapped in echo chambers curated by code. The Church's counter-vision is simple: technology should help us meet, not hide us from each other. Screens should never replace faces.

Justice and Equality The Pope's social teaching has always circled back to inequality, and AI, he argues, is accelerating it. The infrastructure needed for large-scale models—energy, computing, data—is concentrated in wealthy nations. "Digital technology," he told the G7, "has deepened not only material gaps but gaps in power."

The Vatican worries about three flashpoints in particular:

The Digital Divide between rich and poor countries. Workforce Displacement as automation wipes out jobs faster than economies can adapt. Algorithmic Bias that punishes the very people it pretends to evaluate objectively. And hovering above them all is a red line: lethal autonomous weapons. The Vatican has joined U.N. efforts to ban machines that can decide, on their own, who lives and who dies. "No algorithm," one cardinal told me, "should hold a human life in its logic tree."

Freedom and Moral Agency Perhaps the most philosophical pillar—and the most urgent. What happens when algorithms quietly start making the moral calls for us?

Every day, code decides who gets a loan, which job applicants are seen, who gets released on bail. These aren't neutral calculations; they're exercises of power. "If we let machines make moral decisions," a Vatican theologian said, "we shrink the space of human freedom."

The Church draws a bright ethical line: humans must retain final say in matters that touch human welfare. Transparency and oversight aren't optional—they're sacred duties. And behind it all lurks a theological warning: don't mistake technological omniscience for divinity. As one passage reads, "The attempt to create a substitute for God is the oldest temptation."

The Wisdom of the Heart Running through all of this is one phrase Francis keeps returning to: la sapienza del cuore—"the wisdom of the heart."

In his 2024 World Communications Day message, he contrasted machine intelligence with what he calls "relational understanding." Wisdom of the heart, he wrote, isn't about having the right data; it's about knowing what matters.

That idea sounds quaint until you realize how radical it is. AI is all about optimization—making something faster, cheaper, more efficient. The Vatican is asking whether efficiency should even be the point. "You can know everything about how to build a bridge," one adviser told me, "and still forget why people need to cross it."

Francis frames it theologically, but the insight lands universally: knowledge without love is noise. And in a world flooded with information, perhaps the rarest commodity left is meaning.

From Theory to Practice Skeptics often roll their eyes at moral frameworks—nice words that gather dust while industry moves on. But the Vatican has been unusually practical. Its "Rome Call for AI Ethics," signed in 2020 by Microsoft, IBM, and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, committed signatories to transparency, fairness, and accountability in algorithm design.

By 2025, those conversations had matured into technical working groups on bias testing, data governance, and sustainable computing. Even secular policymakers began citing the Vatican's documents in discussions about EU and OECD standards.

The irony is delicious: while Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" ethos burned out, the institution famous for moving slowly managed to articulate the moral horizon tech companies now claim to seek.

A Broader Relevance You don't have to be Catholic—or religious at all—to feel the pull of this argument. What Rome is proposing isn't theology; it's anthropology. It's a reminder that the point of intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is to serve life.

Where governments see GDP and companies see market share, the Vatican sees souls—but you can translate that as human flourishing. It asks the oldest ethical question in the newest form: What kind of people are we becoming?

For policymakers, that means designing regulations that protect dignity before profit. For businesses, it means building systems that help rather than manipulate. For citizens, it's a call to stay awake—to demand transparency and to protect the fragile spaces where real human connection still happens.

The Road Ahead Inside the Vatican's Secretariat for Communication, the work continues. New commissions are studying generative AI, deepfakes, and the energy costs of large models. Philosophers are debating whether an AI that mimics consciousness forces theology to rethink the soul. And yes, somewhere in a quiet conference room, Fr. Benanti and his colleagues are still arguing about data governance.

The Church knows its framework isn't finished; it never will be. Technology evolves, and ethics has to breathe with it. But what's striking is the confidence behind the humility. "We're not afraid of innovation," Benanti told me. "We're afraid of forgetting why we innovate."

That line stayed with me as I reread the Pope's G7 speech. Outside the formal phrasing and translator's cadence, the message is disarmingly simple: progress without conscience isn't progress. A society that outsources moral judgment to code risks forgetting what judgment is for.

In the end, the Vatican's AI blueprint isn't about machines at all. It's about us—our choices, our relationships, our capacity for love and freedom. The Church's bet is that even in a world run by algorithms, the human heart still sets the standard for intelligence.

And maybe that's the wisdom we need most right now.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Rome Call for AI Ethics?

The Rome Call for AI Ethics is a landmark Vatican initiative launched in 2020 that established six core principles for ethical AI development: transparency, inclusion, accountability, impartiality, reliability, and security/privacy. What makes it unique is that major technology companies including Microsoft and IBM signed this declaration alongside religious leaders and governments, committing to develop AI that respects human dignity and serves the common good.

When did the Vatican start working on AI ethics?

The Vatican's formal AI ethics work began around 2019 when a group of priests, engineers, ethicists, and data scientists began meeting to develop a comprehensive moral framework for artificial intelligence. This culminated in Pope Francis speaking about AI at the G7 summit in June 2024 and the ongoing development of the Rome Call for AI Ethics.

What are the six principles of the Rome Call for AI Ethics?

The six principles are: (1) Transparency—AI systems must be explainable and understandable; (2) Inclusion—systems must not discriminate; (3) Accountability—humans must take responsibility for AI decisions; (4) Impartiality—AI must not create biases; (5) Reliability—AI must work consistently; and (6) Security and Privacy—systems must protect users.

Why did tech companies sign the Rome Call?

Major tech companies signed because it provided moral credibility without regulatory teeth—a way to demonstrate ethical commitment without immediate legal obligations. The Vatican offered convening power that wasn't beholden to any government or corporation.

How is the Vatican's approach different from government regulation?

The Vatican approaches AI from moral first principles rather than legal compliance. While regulations focus on enforcement, the Vatican asks fundamental questions about human purpose and dignity. The two approaches complement each other.

What does "putting the human person at the center" mean?

It means AI must serve human flourishing rather than treating humans as resources to optimize. AI should augment human capabilities, not replace human judgment in critical decisions.

How does Catholic teaching about human dignity apply to AI?

Catholic teaching holds that human dignity is inherent—it doesn't come from productivity. This means AI systems cannot treat people as mere data points, and human moral reasoning cannot be outsourced to machines.

Is the Rome Call legally binding?

No. It's a voluntary commitment. The Vatican has no enforcement power. However, its influence comes from moral authority—violating these principles would damage credibility and relationships.