No. Using artificial intelligence is not in itself sinful, and Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas says so clearly, acknowledging benefits across healthcare, education, research and dangerous labour. The moral weight sits elsewhere, and the encyclical puts it in a place most people do not expect.
The distinction the encyclical actually draws
Leo refuses both easy positions:
“In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.” (§9)
The machines are not evil, so smashing them is not the answer. They are not innocent instruments either, because they carry the priorities of whoever built and paid for them. He states the consequence without hedging: “we cannot consider AI to be morally neutral” (§104).
That sentence does more work than it appears to. If a tool is neutral, the only moral question is your intention in picking it up. If a tool already carries somebody’s priorities, then a second question arrives: whose priorities, and what do they measure? Leo puts it directly. Ethical discernment “cannot be limited to asking whether we are using a system for good or bad purposes; it must also examine how that system is designed and what vision of the human person and society is embedded in the data and models that guide it” (§104).
Three things to watch in your own use
Section 100 is the most practical paragraph in the encyclical for ordinary users, and it names three features of personal use that deserve care.
The ease of getting an answer. Speed and simplicity make life easier, and Leo grants that. They can also “encourage excessive reliance and the search for ready-made answers, and weaken personal creativity and judgment” (§100).
The appearance of objectivity. Answers arrive in a confident, uniform voice that hides the fact that they “reflect the cultural assumptions of those who designed and trained them, with all their strengths and limitations” (§100).
The imitation of human warmth. Words of advice, empathy and even affection can be produced without any of it being meant. Leo’s judgement is measured. This can be “engaging and at times genuinely helpful,” but for less discerning users it can create “the illusion of a relationship with a real personal subject” (§100).
Then the sentence that should stop anyone who has started leaning on these tools for company. The real danger, he writes, is not that a person mistakes a machine for a person, but that “they may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections” (§100).
The question worth asking instead
Since using the tool is not the sin, the useful examination is about formation. Leo frames education around exactly this, and the principle generalizes past the classroom:
“Educating people about the use of AI, then, involves teaching them to decide when and for what purpose it ought not to be used.” (§140)
He adds that the ease of getting a summary risks “extinguishing the desire to ask questions, which is a process that bears fruit only over time” (§140), and calls for learning “how to exercise restraint in the use of AI” (§140).
So the examination runs something like this. Is this tool doing work I never needed to do, or is it doing the work that was forming me? A student who hands over the struggle of a first draft has not committed a sin by opening a browser. He has skipped the part of the assignment that was the assignment. A professional who lets a system make the judgement his experience exists to make is in the same position.
Where it does become a moral matter
The encyclical is far more concerned with what is done to people through these systems than with what individuals do with them. Leo’s sharpest concern is decisions about employment, credit, public services or reputation being handed to automated systems that know nothing of “compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and above all, the hope that people are able to change” (§102).
He also warns about the ideological version of the mistake, where the human being is treated “as something to be perfected or surpassed,” which makes it “easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable or less worthy” (§117).
That is where sin enters, and it is mostly not at the keyboard. It is in designing, deploying or defending a system that treats some people as beneath appeal. Using a tool badly is a fault to correct. Building a world in which a person can be refused without anyone answering for it is the thing the encyclical is actually about.
Every section reference is to Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026). The full guide to the encyclical is here.
Related
- Can an Algorithm Be Held Responsible? What the Church Says
- What Did Pope Leo Ask Governments to Do About AI?
The Catholic Citizen starts with this encyclical
Module 1 of The Catholic Citizen works through Magnifica Humanitas over four Thursdays — human dignity, moral responsibility, work, and who owns the common inheritance of data — one issue a week, every claim cited by paragraph number. The curriculum page lists the module in full. Free reflections on the daily Mass readings arrive Saturdays.
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