Silicon Valley takes its AI pitch to the pope

On a recent sunny spring day, Father Eric Salobir led a delegation through St. Peter’s Square, past the crowds and toward Pope Leo XIV. With him were representatives of Meta, Google and Amazon, part of a small group gathered in Rome to discuss child protection in the age of artificial intelligence .

The encounter with the pope was brief. The meeting that followed, in the French embassy to the Holy See in central Rome, lasted for hours. There, Paolo Ruffini, the Vatican’s top communications official, sat across from the tech representatives to wrestle with a question now at the center of Leo’s young papacy: How should one of the world’s oldest moral authorities judge the cutting-edge technology Silicon Valley is racing to build? The April 29 gathering was the latest in a series of meetings that, taken together, amount to a quiet lobbying push by the tech industry ahead of Leo’s first encyclical, according to interviews with seven people for this article. An official papal document due Monday will set out the Catholic Church’s position on artificial intelligence. Silicon Valley has spent years trying to convince governments and the public that AI can be developed responsibly. Now, the industry has been making that case inside the Vatican. In recent months, representatives from the tech sector have traveled to Rome to meet Church officials involved in the debate, presenting themselves as partners in the ethical development of AI. Their message has reached the Vatican through embassy events, small-group meetings and Catholic intermediaries with deep ties to the technology world. The effort reflects the unusual stakes of Leo’s first encyclical. The document is expected to be presented by the pope in person Monday, but its preparation has drawn contributions from cardinals, experts and businesses — all waiting to see how the Church will weigh in on a technology shaping the global economy, the workplace and ever larger spheres of daily life. Sarah El Haïry, the French government’s high commissioner for children, who participated in the April event, said the document could reverberate well beyond the Vatican.

Key points

• The encounter with the pope was brief.
• The meeting that followed, in the French embassy to the Holy See in central Rome, lasted for hours.
• There, Paolo Ruffini, the Vatican’s top communications official, sat across from the tech representatives to wrestle with a question now at the center of Leo’s young papacy: How should one of the w…
• The April 29 gathering was the latest in a series of meetings that, taken together, amount to a quiet lobbying push by the tech industry ahead of Leo’s first encyclical, according to interviews wit…
• An official papal document due Monday will set out the Catholic Church’s position on artificial intelligence.