The Pope's warning against 'new digital slaveries' aligns with crypto's core narrative of decentralization and user empowerment, potentially strengthening the ideological case for permissionless systems. However, it also opens the door for moral scrutiny of crypto's own exploitative practices like rug pulls and predatory DeFi schemes. The Vatican's stance may accelerate regulatory convergence between AI governance and digital asset oversight, especially in the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework.

Pope Leo issued his first encyclical warning about artificial intelligence and 'new digital slaveries'.