The Church at the Center of Data Center Alley
The Catholic Diocese of Arlington occupies the densest concentration of data centers on earth, a geographic fact that Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas has made theologically unavoidable. As Virginia's energy consumption by data centers approaches 39 to 57 percent by 2030, the diocese faces a concrete pastoral question: what does the Church owe to people whose work, meaning, and community are being reshaped by infrastructure they never chose?
More than 300 data centers operate in Northern Virginia, with more than 100 additional facilities under development. Virginia is already the only state where data centers account for more than 20 percent of total energy consumption; the Electric Power Research Institute projects that figure could reach between 39 and 57 percent by 2030.[^1] The Catholic Diocese of Arlington sits inside this corridor.
Anna Knier, coordinator for the diocese's office of peace and justice, described the situation on EWTN News In Depth on June 26, 2026: "It's coming fast and quickly, and it's kind of like we're building the plane as we fly a little bit in terms of all sorts of considerations, including infrastructure."[^1]
What the encyclical names
Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas gave the diocese's geographic situation theological weight. The Holy Father warned about a "tendency to overlook the environmental impact" of AI, a critique aimed directly at the energy and water consumption of facilities like those now covering Northern Virginia. His concerns extended further: the concentration of power in the hands of a few actors, the erosion of dignified work, and the failure to ensure that the benefits of AI reach all people rather than accumulating at the top of the supply chain.[^1]
Data centers receive government tax subsidies while employing comparatively few workers, a disparity Leo's framework on the dignity of work addresses directly. The pastoral problem Knier identifies — how to "shepherd the flock" — is not separate from these structural questions. It is embedded in them.
What Catholic anthropology offers
The Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person, developed by Vitz, Nordling, and Titus, understands the human person as embodied, rational, relational, and ordered toward a transcendent end.[^2] That account does not sit easily alongside the implicit anthropology of most AI development discourse, where the person appears primarily as a data source and consumption node.
The practical consequence is visible in pastoral and clinical work alike. A person whose sense of worth is grounded in vocation — the conviction that they exist for a purpose not reducible to economic output — carries a different relationship to technological displacement than one whose identity is tied to a specific job function. Titus notes that movement out of conditions of mental and moral suffering depends on attention to positive moral and spiritual growth, not only on the removal of symptoms.[^3] The encyclical's insistence on human solidarity and the common good provides exactly the kind of orienting framework that rapid structural change tends to dissolve.
Knier put the pastoral commitment plainly: "We need to be with those who are on the margins." In the context of Data Center Alley, the margins include not only those without digital access but those whose forms of work and self-understanding are rendered economically invisible by automation.
The Church's position
Every faith community in the developed world now lives adjacent to AI infrastructure, even when the server farms are not visible from the parish parking lot. The Diocese of Arlington's situation makes concrete what is otherwise easy to abstract: the Church is not observing the AI economy from a distance. It is inside it, responsible for people whose daily lives are shaped by it.
Knier's phrase — building the plane while flying — is an honest account of a moment in which infrastructure has outrun ethics and pastoral practice is catching up in real time. The encyclical, the diocese's geographic position, and the anthropological tradition it carries are not separate resources. They are a single response.
References
[^1]: Tyler Arnold, "'It's coming fast': Arlington Diocese sits at center of 'Data Center Alley,'" EWTN News, June 27, 2026. [^2]: Paul C. Vitz, William Nordling, and Craig Steven Titus, A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person: Integration with Psychology and Mental Health Practice (Irondale, AL: Divine Mercy University Press, 2020). [^3]: Craig Steven Titus, Philosophy of Mental Health (Divine Mercy University Press, 2020), p. 278.
Related — prudence caution
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