Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical, "Magnifica Humanitas," escalates calls for AI systems to be “disarmed and regulated” in ways that go beyond voluntary internal safeguards, according to reporting on the Vatican release. The text explicitly positions AI governance as a public-interest priority rather than a company-led process. At the same time, Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah and other AI leaders have warned that companies operate within incentives that can conflict with “doing the right thing,” reinforcing concerns that internal oversight is not enough. For higher education, the immediate implication is that universities and schools running AI research, labs, and pilots may face sharper compliance expectations around documentation, auditing, and external accountability. The encyclical also revives a familiar labor-rights policy frame from the late 19th century, linking AI transition risk to worker protections and institutional design. That provides a sharper policy backdrop for campuses developing AI coursework, academic integrity processes, and workforce-development programs. Together, the Vatican and AI-industry comments are signaling that governance models—especially for frontier systems used on students or in instructional settings—are likely to move toward more external regulation and less reliance on vendor promises.