Anthropic Lobbied Pope Leo's Aides to Soften AI Encyclical

Days before the May 25 launch of Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah proposed pulling the company out of the Vatican event, The New York Times reported. The sticking point was a single passage in the 40,000-word Magnifica Humanitas rejecting the possibility that machines can be conscious.

Pope Leo wrote that AI systems "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," and that they have "no moral conscience." Rather than walk, Olah's team privately lobbied the pope's advisers to take seriously the possibility that Claude models might be conscious. The text did not shift.

Olah went on the dais anyway. "We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease," he said at the Vatican lectern, adding, "I don't know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment." Speaking to the Times later, he hedged further: "I'm genuinely uncertain."

The Vatican episode is the visible edge of a quieter campaign. Since fall 2025, Anthropic has flown religious and philosophical leaders from Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Latter-day Saint, Sikh and Greek Orthodox traditions to its offices under non-disclosure agreements to discuss whether Claude might be conscious.