WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Vice President JD Vance said in a new interview with NBC News that while he has not yet fully read Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” what he has read of it “sounds very profound.”
“Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” addressed human dignity concerns posed by artificial intelligence and a “culture of power,” with Pope Leo calling for a renewed commitment to build a “civilization of love.”
Vance, the second Catholic to hold the office of vice president and a proponent of AI technology, told NBC News in an interview published May 26 that so far he has read “bits and pieces” of the encyclical and some coverage of the document.
“What I read of it sounds very profound, and the sort of thing that you would expect and hope from a leader of the Church,” Vance said. “The thing about morality is that the principles never change, but the way you apply those principles does, because the world changes, right?”
In the document, Pope Leo also addressed the just war theory, largely formulated by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, which has been accepted for centuries by the Church to determine whether warfare could be morally justified under certain strict conditions. He argued the theory has become increasingly insufficient in modern conditions, in part due to the rise of AI, and “is now outdated.”
“Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness,” Pope Leo wrote. “The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.”
Pope Leo called for “the most rigorous ethical constraints” on the use of AI in warfare, proposing new “concrete criteria for discernment” and “non-negotiable requirements.”
Vance affirms need to ‘update’ just war theory
Vance previously sparked controversy in April by invoking just war theory in reference to the Trump administration’s conflict in Iran after President Donald Trump criticized Pope Leo’s opposition to that war. Auxiliary Bishop James Massa of Brooklyn, New York, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, without naming Vance, soon after issued a statement defending the Church’s teaching.
But Vance appeared to praise Pope Leo’s comments in the encyclical on just war theory.
“You have new technologies and warfare, so you have to update ‘just war’ doctrine,” Vance said. “New ways of human beings interacting with one another, so you have to kind of rethink the entire Catholic social teaching in light of the new world that we live in. And I think that’s exactly what the pope is trying to do. So I’m glad that he did it.”
Prior to the encyclical’s publication, Vance said at a May 19 press briefing that he expected it to “contain a lot of insights, some of which I’ll probably agree with, some of which I may not, but I think that it’s going to be a very, very important document.”
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.
