Silicon Valley Takes Its AI Pitch to the Pope

Silicon Valley in the Vatican

On a sunny spring day, Father Éric Salobir led a small delegation through St. Peters Square and into a rare audience with Pope Leo XIV. Among the visitors were representatives from Meta, Google and Amazon, who had flown to Rome as part of a broader effort to discuss child protection in the age of artificial intelligence. Their meeting with the pope was brief; the substantive conversation unfolded later at the French embassy to the Holy See and lasted for hours.

The April 29 gathering was one of several recent encounters that together amount to a concerted if quiet lobbying push by the tech industry ahead of Pope Leo XIVs first encyclical on artificial intelligence, according to seven people interviewed for this article. The Vatican is expected to publish the official document on Monday, setting out the Catholic Churchs position on a technology that is reshaping the global economy, workplaces and intimate realms of daily life.

Silicon Valley has long sought to persuade governments and the public that AI can be developed responsibly. Now the industry is making that case inside the Vatican. In recent months, tech executives and policy leads have traveled to Rome to meet Church officials, positioning themselves as partners in ethical AI. Their outreach has come through embassy events, small-group dialogues and Catholic intermediaries who straddle the worlds of faith and technology.

The encyclicals stakes are unusually high for both sides. Contributors to the document include cardinals, academic experts and business figures all eager to see how the Church will judge a fast-moving technology. Sarah El Haïry, Frances high commissioner for children, who joined the April event, likened the potential impact of the encyclical to Leo XIIIs 1891 teaching on workers rights, which helped shape Catholic social doctrine during the Industrial Revolution.

An ethical crossroads: the Vatican, tech and geopolitics

Pope Leo XIV has signaled from the start that technology, and AI in particular, will be central to his papacy. He intentionally chose a papal name that echoes Leo XIII, known for defending human dignity amid sweeping economic change, and has said he intends to respond to another industrial revolution driven by artificial intelligence. Even symbolic gestures have hinted at modernity: shortly after his election, an Apple Watch was visible beneath the sleeve of his cassock as he celebrated his first Mass.

When the encyclical is unveiled, the pope is expected to be joined by Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, an AI firm that has publicly prioritized safety and resisted some Pentagon requests related to surveillance and autonomous weapons. Anthropic has longstanding ties to Vatican advisers: its January constitution for its flagship model Claude credited Bishop Paul Tighe and Father Brendan McGuire two Vatican-linked advisers among outside contributors.

Several individuals and small networks have helped bridge Rome and Silicon Valley. Father Salobir, a former investment banker, chairs the Human Technology Foundation, which promotes ethical reflection on technology and counts Google, Palantir and Qualcomm among its members. He helped establish a French AI Observatory in Rome in 2024, creating a forum for off-the-record exchanges between tech leaders and Vatican officials. Those conversations, which began under Pope Francis, have increased in frequency under Leo.

The April meeting included officials such as Benoît Tabaka of Googles southern Europe policy team, Claire Scharwatt from Amazon France, Claudia Trivilino of Meta for Italy and Greece, and Adrien Abecassis of the Paris Peace Forum. Although the stated focus was child protection, the discussion broadened to the deeper social effects of always-on communication tools and the foundations of human development. Participants described the tone as humanist rather than theological, with some tech executives engaging personally and others sticking to scripted talking points.

Participants drafted a summary note after the meeting and passed it to Clara Chappaz, Frances minister delegate for artificial intelligence and digital affairs, for possible inclusion in French policy discussions ahead of the G7.

The Vaticans outreach has not gone unnoticed in capitals. The United States despite diplomatic friction with Pope Leo XIV under the Trump administration has maintained channels to the Holy See on AI. In early May, the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See hosted events on AI and work, backed by Australia, the U.K., Japan and Taiwan. George Osborne, former British chancellor and now head of country relations at OpenAI, discussed the future of work and AIs potential to intensify inequality with Vatican advisers.

U.S. and allied engagement aims in part to show the Vatican that some companies and individuals approach AI with ethical commitments. But political leaders will not necessarily accept a papal encyclical uncritically: JD Vance, the U.S. vice president and a Catholic convert, acknowledged the document will carry influence but said he may agree with some insights and not others.

After months of embassy events, private meetings and outside submissions, those who tried to shape the Vaticans thinking are now waiting to see which arguments Pope Leo XIV will enshrine. As one contributor close to the Vatican observed, encyclicals are meant to endure: the Church rarely recants what it has written. The resulting document could therefore have a lasting effect on how governments, businesses and societies reckon with the moral dimensions of artificial intelligence.

The Vaticans judgment will not settle technical debates or regulatory detail, but it will supply a moral framework that could influence public discourse and policy priorities as AI continues to scale across economies and everyday life.