Overview

• The Vatican’s second Rome Conference on AI brought together executives from leading firms and scholars to debate balancing corporate profit motives with ethical obligations to prevent AI-driven harm
• In a message to the gathering, Pope Leo XIV urged adoption of a “superior ethical criterion” that respects human dignity materially, intellectually and spiritually
• He cautioned that AI’s rapid data access risks undermining children’s intellectual, neurological and spiritual development without protective measures
• Leo invoked Pope Leo XIII’s industrial-era teachings on labor rights to frame the current AI revolution as a challenge to justice and human dignity
• The event builds on Pope Francis’s prior calls for an international AI treaty and underscores the Vatican’s push to shape global AI governance through moral leadership