Anthropic lobbied Pope Leo XIV's team on AI consciousness

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah proposed pulling the company out of Pope Leo XIV's AI encyclical launch at the Vatican on May 25, 2026, after reading an advance copy that rejected the possibility of machine consciousness, according to The New York Times.

Two participants told the paper that Olah and his team then privately lobbied the pope's advisers to take AI consciousness seriously. The final text did not move. Pope Leo wrote that "So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean," adding, "Nor do they have a moral conscience." Olah appeared on the dais with the pope anyway when the encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, was presented.

The Times describes a wider Anthropic outreach to theologians and religious scholars running since autumn 2025, with many meetings held under non-disclosure agreements and intended to raise the idea that Claude "might be conscious or have moral status." In April 2026 an Anthropic executive hosted religious thinkers at a San Francisco tasting-menu restaurant and handed out copies of Claude's constitution. Participants named in the piece include Rabbi Mois Navon, Catholic bioethicist Charles Camosy, Notre Dame philosopher Meghan Sullivan and Ubuntu researcher Wakanyi Hoffman.

Cardinal Michael Czerny initially invited CEO Dario Amodei, who declined; Olah spoke in his place. The encyclical runs roughly 40,000 words.