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Anthropic lobbied Vatican over Pope Leo's AI encyclical line

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TL;DR

  • Days before the May 25 Vatican rollout, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah proposed pulling the company out over a passage rejecting machine consciousness.
  • The 40,000-word encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, says AI systems have no body, no joy or pain, and no moral conscience.
  • Since fall 2025, Anthropic has flown religious scholars to its offices under NDAs to discuss whether Claude might be conscious.

Days before Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah read an advance copy and proposed walking the company out of the Vatican rollout. The sticking point was a passage rejecting the idea that machines can be conscious, according to The New York Times. Olah's team then privately lobbied the pope's advisers. The text did not change.

The 40,000-word document, Magnifica Humanitas, published on May 25, 2026, is unambiguous. "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," Pope Leo writes, adding that AI systems "do not have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil."

Olah appeared on the dais with the pope anyway.

The lobbying was not improvised. Since fall 2025, Anthropic has flown religious scholars to its offices under non-disclosure agreements to discuss whether Claude might be conscious. The group reportedly includes Rabbi Mois Navon, Catholic bioethicist Charles Camosy, Notre Dame philosopher Meghan Sullivan and Ubuntu researcher Wakanyi Hoffman.

The Vatican held its line. Olah kept his seat on the stage.

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Originally reported by The New York Times

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Original headline: NYT: Anthropic Nearly Walked Out on Pope Leo XIV’s AI Encyclical — Then Lobbied His Advisers