Pope Leo criticizes Nvidia’s Jensen Huang over AI safety, positioning Vatican as moral counterweight to Big Tech

Pope Leo XIV has publicly called out Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for his resistance to AI safety regulations, escalating a confrontation between the Vatican and one of the most valuable companies on Earth. The criticism came during a press conference aboard the papal flight returning from France on September 28, 2026, where the Pope addressed growing concerns about AI’s unchecked development. The Pope’s comments directly rebutted the framing, shared by Huang and President Donald Trump, that expert warnings about AI threats amount to “fake news.” In the Pope’s view, the concerns raised by AI safety researchers are legitimate and demand a serious regulatory response, not dismissal. A 42,300-word moral framework The papal critique didn’t materialize out of thin air. It builds on Pope Leo’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, published on May 25, 2026. The document runs 42,300 words and lays out a comprehensive ethical framework for artificial intelligence development. The encyclical’s central demand is what the Pope calls “disarming” AI. That means extracting it from structures that systematically cause harm, whether to workers, children, or civilians in conflict zones. Specifically, the doc...