Pope’s AI warning latest feud between Trump Administration and Vatican

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum opened a new front Tuesday in the Trump administration’s public feud with the Vatican, dismissing Pope Leo XIV’s warning about artificial intelligence as the White House resists new guardrails on the rapidly evolving technology.

“I didn’t know that tech editorializing was part of the role of being pope,” Burgum said in an interview on Fox Business, referring to Leo’s first encyclical, a 42,300-word document that called for stronger AI oversight and warned the technology could displace workers, deepen inequality and put lethal weapons decisions beyond human control.

But Vice President JD Vance, the highest-ranking Catholic in the Trump administration and one of its most prominent links to Silicon Valley, in an interview with NBC praised the same message as “profound” and the kind of “moral leadership” the church should offer at the start of the AI age.

The split response underscores the delicate politics facing President Donald Trump as he makes AI dominance and deregulation central to his second-term economic agenda while navigating an increasingly public feud with the first American pope.

“The vice president now seems to be backtracking on earlier criticisms when he said Pope Leo needs to learn more theology,” said Peter Casarella, a Duke Divinity School professor of theology who studies AI. “They got ahead of their skis and are rowing back.”

Leo’s remarks follow Trump’s decision last week to delay an executive order that would have created a voluntary AI safety review process. Reversing course after tech industry pressure, Trump cited concerns that oversight could slow the U.S. competitive edge against China.

Some Catholics have also warned that unchecked AI could outpace policymakers and worsen problems tied to work, children and family life.

“The so-called tech right, which is handcuffing the White House from doing something reasonable, I think will be revealed as mistaken,” said Michael Toscano, director of the Family First Technology Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, who supports the pope’s push for more ethical AI guardrails. “I think the real danger is between now and November” when the U.S. will hold elections.

The AI fight is the latest flashpoint in an escalating battle between the White House and the Vatican.

In the year since becoming pope, Leo has criticized Trump’s mass deportation push, condemned the administration’s war in Iran and declined an invitation to join Trump’s “Board of Peace,” saying the United Nations should remain central to crisis management.

Trump, meanwhile, has personally attacked Leo as “weak on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy,” while accusing the pope of catering to the “radical left.” Trump also posted an an image that appeared to depict himself as Jesus Christ tending to a sick man. Leo responded that he had “no fear of the Trump administration.”

The encyclical’s rollout added another political wrinkle. Leo released the document alongside Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, the AI juggernaut already at odds with the Trump administration after refusing to give the U.S. military unrestricted access to its technology.

Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment.

“The back-and-forth dialogue between the pope and the titans of industry has rarely, if ever, been seen before,” said Paolo Carozza, a University of Notre Dame law professor, co-chair of Meta’s Oversight Board and a Pope Francis-nominated member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. “It is a positive sign for many people.”

For Trump, disputes with the Pope could create friction with Catholic voters, a key part of Trump’s coalition. Trump won 55% of Catholic voters in 2024, compared with 43% for Kamala Harris, according to Pew Research Center. Four years earlier, Catholics split almost evenly, with 50% backing Joe Biden and 49% supporting Trump.

A public dispute with the pope is unlikely to immediately shift conservative Catholic support for Trump. Many conservative Catholics remain aligned with him on abortion, religious liberty and cultural issues.

But repeated clashes with Leo over immigration, war and now AI could matter with Catholic voters who are less firmly tied to either party, especially if the dispute centers on workers, families and economic power.

“When you couple inflation, gas, war with Iran and then all of this, it’s one more reason to lose voters in his camp who didn’t really want to be there in the first place,” said Ryan Burge, a political scientist at the Washington University in St. Louis who studies religion and politics.

That tension could be especially important in the midterm elections, when Catholic voters may play an outsized role in swing districts in places like Long Island, Pennsylvania and Ohio, where Republicans have made inroads, Burge said.

“The Republican Party has to be careful about who it courts and who it pushes away,” Burge told CNBC. “After Christian white voters, Catholics may be the most important voters for Republicans.”

Another risk is that Democrats, labor groups and AI-safety advocates could use Leo’s warning to argue that the administration is too deferential to Silicon Valley and too dismissive of concerns about workers, families and national security.

“If I was a Democrat running in a heavily Catholic district in the midterms, Trump comments mocking the Pope would be all over ads,” Burge said. “They write themselves.”