Vatican bans autonomous weapons and apologizes for papal slave trade authorization

Pope Leo XIV just dropped a 200-page encyclical that declared autonomous weapons morally impermissible, retired 1,700 years of just war doctrine, and buried the first-ever institutional Church apology for legally authorizing the transatlantic slave trade — all in the same document being marketed as the Vatican's AI manifesto. The slavery apology is not a footnote: Leo is arguing that cobalt mines, displaced workers, and algorithmic power concentration are the same moral problem as the 15th-century papal bulls that gave the slave trade its legal backbone, and you cannot name new bondage without reckoning with the old kind your institution helped build. Meanwhile the AI company whose co-founder spoke from the Vatican's dais is currently being sued by the U.S. government — and the Pope, standing next to him, just told his entire industry its technology needs to be disarmed.