Travis Callaway, like many with such interests, eagerly awaits an expected encyclical from Pope Leo XIV on artificial intelligence.

His hope is that the pontiff will provide practical guidance that will illuminate a clear path forward for seminary instructors, parish priests, catechists, lay Catholics and other stakeholders of the global Catholic community.

“If it is too theoretical, I think that does a disservice to Catholics in their daily lives,” said Callaway.

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Ideally, Callaway desires for this papal letter to be as potent as Rerum Novarum (Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor), the signature encyclical of the current Bishop of Rome’s namesake predecessor Pope Leo XIII.

Callaway, co-host of the Coffee, Commerce & Catechesis podcast, university professor, business advisor, chief operating officer of the Castletown Media film studio, and most importantly, new father, will continue engaging in the AI space in order to navigate this new, uncertain frontier.

Amid his ongoing studies to earn a master’s degree from the University of Toronto’s Toronto School of Theology, Callaway took a course offered by St. Augustine’s Seminary on Catholic social teaching. This class tasked students to read all the main encyclicals in the Catholic intellectual tradition, and "captivated" him.

Rerum Novarum was published in 1891 during the Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914), an era of mass societal changes driven by the emerging technologies of electricity, petroleum and steel. Dignity of the human person and labour, the right to private property, cooperation between the classes and the role of the state in periods of tectonic shifts are a few of the major themes examined by Pope Leo XIII in this foundational text.

“I keep going back to it because I think there are things that are either forgotten, poorly understood or are equally applicable to as they were during the Industrial Revolution,” said Callaway.

An immediate critique one could potentially raise with Callaway’s insight is that the document does not have much to say to us in the hyper-technologized world of 2025, but Callaway would counter by stating “we misunderstand technology.”

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“Pavement is a type of technology, the wheel is technology and aqueducts are technology,” he said. “Humans have been engaging with technologies since the dawn of our civilization. We humans don't know what it is to live without technology. We just assume that technology means it's affected by the Internet. Certainly, that is a part of technology, but that fundamentally misunderstands what technology it is.

“Rerum Novarum can be as relevant and applicable to algorithms, social media networking sites and any of the crazy things that AI is coming up with, including some of the scary stuff that was discussed at the symposium (recently hosted by the Diocese of Calgary and St. Mary's University), like transhumanist tendencies.” added Callaway.

The Oct. 17-18 forum at St. Mary's drew some of the leading figures examining AI in Catholic circles, including Matthew Harvey Sanders and Dr. Steven Umbrello, founder of the world-leading Catholic Large Language Model (LLM) platform Magisterium AI, and the managing director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, respectively.

Callaway, along with his Coffee, Commerce & Catechesis podcast co-host Rigel Raju and personal finance and investment lecturer Braden Richie, has recently founded Rerum Novarum Partners. This organization endeavours to help Catholic businesses flourish by emulating Rerum Novarum principles.

Callaway, who teaches at Mount Royal University, the University of Calgary and the University of Lethbridge, highlighted two of the key teachings within Rerum Novarum that business leaders of the present and future should be mindful of each day.

He said business leaders must ask if they treat their employees, co-workers, partners and customers with true dignity.

“Not just what our business climate allows for, because it probably doesn't, it probably allows for things that aren't consistent with what the Church tells us we ought to care about as Catholics,” said Callaway.

He also endorses the Rerum Novarum teaching on subsidiarity.

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“It's this idea that the decisions that affect people should be made at the level that's closest to them,” said Callaway. “This is one of the fundamental reasons why the Church has repeatedly condemned communism and socialism in the variants thereof, because fundamentally, those systems of social and economic arrangement take things to a very high level. Basically, the state coordinates everything, including the things that affect you, even down to the level of the individual family, the domestic church.”

Coffee, Commerce & Catechesis can be found on YouTube. While both Callaway and Raju work in business commerce, the commerce in the podcast title also alludes to the exchange of ideas on a vast array of topics, including marriage, parenthood, social media, the culture wars, consciousness and health care.