The U.S. Catholic bishops have formed a task force on artificial intelligence, with Bishop Oscar Cantú of San Jose as its chairman. The September 16 announcement followed a meeting between the bishops’ Administrative Committee and representatives of technology companies.
Cantú told Religion News Service that about seven technology experts from four companies spoke with roughly 30 bishops for two and a half hours. He said the discussion took place under Chatham House rules, which allowed the participants to speak candidly but limits what he can disclose about who said what.
John Paul II described technology as an ally of work that can become an enemy.
Afterward, more than a dozen bishops went to Capitol Hill and met with members of Congress. The bishops’ conference says they urged lawmakers to adopt AI safeguards and legislation to protect children online.
Cantú described the task force’s work to RNS: continue talking with AI developers, advocate for legislation, teach bishops and dioceses how the technology works, and report to the Vatican’s AI commission. He gave no timetable for that work.
What the bishops have already asked for
Pope Leo XIV’s May encyclical, “Magnifica humanitas,” prompted the bishops’ response. Blaze’s Joseph MacKinnon covered its warnings, including the pope’s concerns about automated killings and the extraction of personal data. The new story is what U.S. bishops will do with those principles.
They aren’t starting from zero. In a 2025 letter to congressional leaders, the bishops asked for human oversight of employment decisions and weapons systems, protections for children online, and public accountability for government AI use. They also warned about the water and power demands of data centers. The task force can press those positions with lawmakers while examining how the Church uses AI in its own institutions.
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The letter gives the task force something to measure itself against. It says AI should supplement human work and judgment. In education, health care and public services, the bishops warn that automated decisions can carry biases into consequential choices. What human oversight means in each setting still needs spelling out.
Is it appropriate for the job?
Economist E.F. Schumacher helped popularize the idea of appropriate technology in his 1973 book “Small Is Beautiful.” A later U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report described it as fitting the scale and complexity of a tool to the job, while considering the needs and resources of the people who will use it.
The bishops have not used that label for their AI work, but it gives their call for human oversight a practical edge. Take hiring, which their 2025 letter specifically addresses. An AI system might help sort applications. If a manager cannot explain why it rejected a qualified applicant, however, putting that manager’s name on the decision does not make the process accountable. The task force could spell out what a human reviewer must be able to see, correct, and explain.
Catholic teaching has its own language for this concern. In his 1981 encyclical “Laborem exercens,” John Paul II described technology as an ally of work that can become an enemy when it strips workers of responsibility or replaces them.
That is now the question that the Catholic Church and all humanity are wrestling with. AI is here and unlikely to go away. How do we direct it into being a pro-human technology and not one that is ultimately destructive?
Tech, Humanity, Ai, Catholic church, Congress
