Pope Leo XIV denounced AI-directed warfare as a “spiral of annihilation” during a historic visit to Rome’s La Sapienza University on 14 May 2026. He criticised European defence spending increases at the expense of education and healthcare, and called for tighter monitoring of AI in military and civilian use.TL;DR
Pope Leo XIV used a historic visit to Europe’s largest university to denounce the growing role of artificial intelligence in warfare, warning that investments in AI-directed weaponry are driving the world toward what he called a “spiral of annihilation.” Speaking at Rome’s La Sapienza University on Wednesday, the pontiff called for tighter monitoring of how AI is developed and deployed in both military and civilian settings, and criticised European governments for increasing defence budgets at the expense of education and healthcare.
The address marked the first papal visit to La Sapienza since Pope Benedict XVI cancelled a planned speech at the campus in 2008 after protests from faculty and students. Leo received a warm reception. Among those greeting him were 72 young Palestinians who arrived in Italy this week from Gaza through a humanitarian corridor organised by the Diocese of Rome, the Sant’Egidio Community, and the university. They will continue their studies at Sapienza on full scholarships, with accommodation, academic tutoring, and psychological support provided through 2029.
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Leo’s speech centred on the relationship between technology, conflict, and human responsibility. He identified AI as one of the most critical issues facing humanity, particularly its application in warfare, and argued that the current trajectory of military investment is incompatible with the protection of human life.
“What is happening in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon, and in Iran illustrates the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation,” he said. The conflicts he cited span a range of contexts in which AI-enabled systems have been deployed or proposed, from autonomous drone operations to surveillance and targeting infrastructure. AI weapons are already transforming the nature of war, a process that the pope framed not as a future risk but as a present reality.
He called for better monitoring of AI development so that it “does not absolve humans of responsibility for their choices and does not exacerbate the tragedy of conflicts.” That language echoes the Vatican’s longstanding position, articulated in its 2020 Rome Call for AI Ethics, that technology must serve human dignity and never replace human judgment in decisions about life and death. The challenge, as Leo framed it, is that AI has already been weaponised in ways that outpace the governance structures designed to constrain it.
Leo reserved particular criticism for European defence spending, which has surged in 2025 and 2026 amid the war in Ukraine and broader geopolitical instability. European NATO members increased military expenditure by 14 per cent in 2025, to $864 billion, the fastest rate of growth since 1953 according to SIPRI. NATO allies agreed at The Hague summit on a new benchmark of 3.5 per cent of GDP for core defence spending, up from the previous 2 per cent target.
The pope argued that this rearmament was coming at the direct expense of public services. He denounced military budgets that enriched “elites who care nothing for the common good” while education and healthcare suffered. He urged the university’s students and faculty to move in the opposite direction, toward research and education that value life, “the lives of peoples who cry out for peace and justice.”
It was a pointed message delivered at a pointed location. La Sapienza, founded by Pope Boniface VIII in 1303, is now a secular institution with more than 100,000 students. The fact that a pope was welcomed there warmly, 18 years after his predecessor was effectively disinvited, suggests that Leo’s willingness to address political and technological questions on secular terms has broadened the Vatican’s audience.
The La Sapienza address is part of a broader campaign by Leo to position the Vatican as a serious interlocutor on AI governance. Two days after the speech, the Vatican announced the creation of an Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a body comprising representatives from seven Vatican departments including the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The commission will examine AI’s effects on humanity and is coordinated by the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
Leo’s first encyclical, reportedly titled Magnifica Humanitas, is expected in the coming weeks and will place AI at the centre of Catholic social teaching alongside labour, human dignity, and peace. The encyclical is understood to draw a parallel between the current AI revolution and the industrial upheaval that prompted Leo XIII’s landmark 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed workers’ rights. By choosing the name Leo, the American-born pope, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago in 1955, signalled from the start that he intended to engage with the economic and technological disruptions of his era. The question of how AI is governed, who it serves, and whether governance frameworks can keep pace with the technology, is now formally part of the papacy’s agenda.
Papal statements on technology do not carry the force of regulation. But the Vatican’s convening power on AI ethics is not trivial. The 2020 Rome Call for AI Ethics was signed by Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. It established principles, including transparency, accountability, and the prohibition of AI systems that override human agency, that have informed subsequent regulatory frameworks including the EU’s AI Act.
Leo’s intervention comes at a moment when the practical application of AI in warfare is no longer theoretical. Autonomous drone systems are already approaching the point where they can select targets without human intervention. Ukraine’s defence technology sector has conducted tens of thousands of combat missions using unmanned systems. The United States, China, and Russia are all investing heavily in AI-enabled military capabilities. The pope’s argument, that this trajectory leads to a dehumanisation of conflict and a transfer of moral responsibility from people to machines, is shared by a significant number of AI researchers, ethicists, and arms control advocates. But it has not yet produced binding international restrictions on autonomous weapons, despite years of debate at the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
The gap between the pope’s moral framework and the geopolitical reality is wide. European governments are increasing defence spending because they believe the security environment demands it. AI-enabled military systems are being developed because they offer tactical advantages that no major power is willing to forgo unilaterally. Leo’s speech at La Sapienza did not offer a policy mechanism to bridge that gap. What it did do was restate, with the institutional weight of the Catholic Church behind it, that the question of whether machines should be entrusted with decisions about killing is not merely technical. It is, in the pope’s framing, a question about what kind of civilisation humanity is building, and the answer so far is one that values annihilation over life.
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