Most people wouldn’t even question whether AI is conscious. It is not knitted together by the hand of God. It doesn’t have its own moral compass, independent thoughts, or emotions. It has no soul. Yet Anthropic desperately tried to convince religious scholars, leaders, and even the pope that Claude is sentient, but in lieu of a blessing, the company was rebuked instead.
Going back to April 2026, Anthropic has wined and dined with a number of religious scholars of various religions, backgrounds, and locales, all under temporary NDA so as not to leak the true content of their meetings. As each meeting went along, it quickly devolved into talks of Claude, Anthropic’s frontier AI model, exhibiting human traits.
‘In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce.’
”Anthropic’s leaders were talking about Claude as if it were not mere software,” Elizabeth Dias wrote for the New York Times. They equated it to something more. Something alive. Something humanoid.
The Anthropic team wanted to design Anthropic to abide by a moral code — not a bad thing, now that automated AI cyberattacks are on the rise. But they believed that living by that moral code made it akin to a human. Company co-founder Christopher Olah reportedly even floated the idea of having Claude participate in sacred rites in line with the Catholic faith, including confession when it makes a mistake and communion.
One man who attended these meetings, Dr. Charles C. Camosy, professor of moral theology and bioethics at the Catholic University of America, wasn’t impressed. “I came in … very skeptical. I leave the conversation very skeptical. Actually, I leave more certain … now that Claude does not have a significant moral status than when I went in, because I understand it and thought about it a lot more soberly and carefully.” While he couldn’t divulge the exact details of the meeting, he called it “an illuminating set of exchanges.”
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L-R: Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images; the Little Catholic Box
Anthropic's plight eventually led to the very top of the religious hierarchy, as Olah sat down with Pope Leo XIV to pose the human quandary. The pope invited Olah to join him at the Vatican in late May to release an encyclical called the "Magnifica Humanitas" ("Magnificent Humanity").
By this time, Olah hoped he had convinced the pope that Claude was more than machine. However, in the advance copy of "Magnifica Humanitas" that he received just days before their meeting, the pope adamantly disagreed. His rebuke of Olah’s ideals was so harsh that Anthropic nearly pulled out of the encyclical launch.
The document is lengthy, at more than 37,000 words, but it can be summed up by a post the pope sent out on X.com that took a stunning stance against the proliferation of AI over mankind. He wrote:
In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.
Pope Leo XIV/X.com
Anthropic’s behavior has grown even weirder since the fallout with the pope. Just this month, the company updated Claude’s usage policy to include a provision barring users from “engag[ing] in sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior toward our models.” In other words, treat Claude respectfully, as you would a person, or your account could be suspended or terminated.
On one hand, this is a noble change. It is courteous to be respectful, not just for others, but for your own soul as well. However, if Claude is sentient as Anthropic suggests, wouldn’t this new rule violate the First Amendment on free speech unto others? There’s also the glaring fact that Claude is an LLM, not a person with a soul, and if that wasn’t clear before, the pope’s stance is irrefutable.
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