VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” is rapidly becoming more than a Vatican document about artificial intelligence.
In Italy, the text is already being absorbed into a broader political struggle over how democracies should govern technology, regulate Big Tech and respond to the growing concentration of digital power.
Claiming the issue: Italy’s Democratic Party is using the encyclical to legitimize a more interventionist approach to AI governance.
- Pd leader Elly Schlein described the text as a “powerful message” and embraced Leo XIV’s warnings about technological power becoming concentrated “in a few hands,” arguing that unregulated AI risks producing “new dependencies, exclusions, manipulation and inequalities.”
- More broadly, the center-left is framing the encyclical as a warning against a global “culture of power” in which economic, technological and geopolitical competition increasingly override democratic oversight, peace and human dignity.
Why it matters: The Vatican’s language gives the European center-left a moral vocabulary to criticize deregulated technological capitalism without appearing anti-innovation.
- The encyclical strengthens the overlap between Catholic social doctrine and European debates over platform regulation, digital sovereignty and democratic oversight of algorithms.
The big picture: Leo XIV’s encyclical treats AI not primarily as a technological issue, but as a political question about power. The pope repeatedly warns against systems in which technological and economic control becomes concentrated in the hands of a small number of actors operating beyond meaningful democratic accountability.
- The document criticizes what it calls a modern “culture of power,” linking AI development to broader geopolitical fragmentation, weakened multilateralism and the normalization of permanent conflict.
- “Peacebuilding, development cooperation, disarmament, conflict prevention and the construction of mutual trust are set aside in the name of power politics,” the encyclical states.
- Rather than framing AI as neutral innovation, the pope presents it as a force capable of amplifying existing inequalities, dependencies and political asymmetries if left unchecked.
Zoom in: The Pd’s AI doctrine. Italy’s Democratic Party moved quickly to position itself alongside the encyclical’s core arguments.
- Across multiple statements from senior party figures, the Pd framed Leo XIV’s text as a warning against technological concentration, algorithmic dependency and the growing political influence of large digital platforms.
- The common thread running through the responses was the idea that artificial intelligence should remain subject to democratic oversight rather than being shaped primarily by monopolies, deregulation and strategic competition.
- Several figures also linked the encyclical to broader European debates over digital sovereignty, platform accountability, online protections and the regulation of algorithmic systems.
- More broadly, the party treated the document less as a religious intervention than as a political framework for governing technological transformation — echoing Schlein’s argument that AI development cannot be left in the hands of a small number of powerful actors.
What they’re saying:
- Nicola Zingaretti, the Pd’s delegation leader in the European Parliament, described the risk of a future governed by “digital oligarchies.”
- Sandro Ruotolo, the party’s information chief and a member of the European Parliament, linked Big Tech concentration to the political culture surrounding Trump-era deregulation and called for stronger European digital sovereignty.
- Senators Lorenzo Basso and Antonio Nicita, who recently introduced a bill on algorithm regulation, argued that the encyclical supports stronger safeguards against algorithmic profiling, disinformation and workplace surveillance.
- Together, the responses suggest the Italian center-left sees the pope’s text as a political framework for democratic regulation of technology — not merely a religious intervention.
Between the lines: The convergence is politically significant. For years, parts of the European center-left have struggled to articulate a coherent political language around AI that balances innovation, social protection and democratic control.
- Leo XIV’s encyclical offers something many progressive parties have lacked: a moral narrative capable of connecting labor, inequality, technological concentration, war and democracy inside a single framework.
- That helps explain why Democratic Party figures are treating the document less as theology and more as a governing agenda.
- There is also a more immediate electoral calculation behind the convergence. Pd officials increasingly see issues such as work, inequality, dignity and the social consequences of technological disruption as one possible channel to reconnect with Catholic voters — a constituency that has historically been decisive in Italian general elections and could again prove crucial ahead of what are expected to be difficult national elections next year.
The overlap is especially visible around three themes:
- regulation over deregulation;
- democratic oversight over private technological concentration;
- European sovereignty over dependence on American platforms.
Yes but… Beyond Schlein’s endorsement of the pope’s AI agenda, the Vatican had already received public backing from Giorgia Meloni’s government following Donald Trump’s recent attacks on the Holy See — a reminder that, across Italy’s political spectrum, the Pope remains both a major national figure and a potentially influential reference point for Catholic voters ahead of next year’s elections.
The Vatican-Trump dimension. The encyclical lands at a delicate moment in Vatican-U.S. relations.
- While Leo XIV never mentions Washington directly, the encyclical’s repeated criticism of “power politics,” weakened multilateralism and the concentration of technological authority cuts against the more transactional and deregulatory vision associated with Trump allies and parts of Silicon Valley.
- Several Pd figures made that connection explicitly, presenting the battle over AI governance as inseparable from a wider confrontation over democracy (against the darkness), globalization and political power.
The bottom line. Leo XIV’s AI encyclical is already evolving into something larger than a Vatican position paper on technology.
- In Italy, it is becoming a political reference point for the center-left’s attempt to build a democratic, European and regulation-driven response to artificial intelligence.
