Rep. Ro Khanna, D-California, Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, co-led a bipartisan congressional delegation to the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Leo XIV, which took place August 20, 2026.
The visit was part of a broader trip to Europe focused on shared national security priorities, competition with China, and exploring opportunities for further collaboration on economic security and AI, with stops in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, an August 21 press release from his office said.
In Vatican City, the delegation attended Pope Leo XIV’s general audience. Ranking Member Khanna spoke with the Pope about his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, and praised his calls for protecting human dignity in the AI era.
The members also met with Under Secretary of the Secretariat of State, Monsignor Daniel Pacho, to discuss religious freedom in China, values-based foreign policies, and the Pope’s AI leadership on preserving humanity and preventing the concentration of power as technology develops. Members also met a leading AI expert to discuss model distillation, AI safety guardrails, and data centers.
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“I was honored to meet with Pope Leo, who has offered, more clearly than any other global leader, an ethical framework for AI grounded in two fundamental principles: human dignity and equality. Every technology leader should follow this framework. That is why I am calling on the CEOs of major AI companies to answer for how their policies align with Magnifica humanitas, including how they will prevent mass unemployment and ensure that technology remains in the service of human beings,” Khanna is quoted saying in the press release.
Following the meetings in Vatican City, Rep. Khanna sent letters to the CEOs of Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI, asking how they intend to align their technology with the Pope’s encyclical.