The paper carried Monday's brief on Vice President JD Vance's May 19 press-briefing remarks about Pope Leo XIV's forthcoming first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. Tuesday closes the recap as the encyclical text — published Monday at the Vatican — and the Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah's launch-panel remarks land in the same week.

The Vance quote, given in response to a press question at the White House on May 19, is the only on-the-record acknowledgment from the U.S. executive branch that the encyclical may shape AI policy. "I think when the pope issues an encyclical on artificial intelligence, it's going to have some influence," Vance said. "I, of course, don't know how much influence. I don't know exactly what it's going to say, but I think when the leader of the world's largest Christian denomination speaks on an issue like that, it's certainly going to have some influence." [1]

Vance also said: "I think that it's going to be a very, very important document." [1] He is the first Catholic Vice President since Joe Biden. He converted to Catholicism in 2019 and has a memoir of his conversion, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, scheduled for release this summer. The framing matters because his public position on AI policy has otherwise been the administration's "pro-innovation" line. The encyclical is the first external moral document Vance has named as a potentially shaping influence on that line.

Magnifica Humanitas was signed May 15, the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII's labor encyclical Rerum Novarum, and released May 25. [2] The encyclical addresses "the protection of human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence." At the Vatican press conference Monday, Christopher Olah of Anthropic was one of the panel speakers alongside cardinals and theologians. That is the first time a pope and a frontier-AI lab co-founder have shared a launch stage. [3] Vance has not, as of Tuesday afternoon, issued a post-text response. The paper continues to track for one.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington