Will resolve positively if by 2040 Catholic church officially reconizes that at least some AIs may have souls.
In the context of this question, AI includes any sort of entities executed on a traditional or quantum computer, including ML models, code and full brain emulations.
For the question to resolve as YES, the Catholic church has to either explicitly declare that AIs have souls, or to declare that AIs have moral standing at least at the level of higher animals. Recognizing that an AIs can sin or suffer also qualifies.
If by 2040-01-01 I haven't seen any relevant news and none have been linked in this posts comments, I will resolve the questions as NO by default.
I do not bet on my own questions.
1,0002040 is likely post ASI, wouldn't be super surprised if soon after it did stuff on the level of e.g. it outright convincing the pope to abdicate and every single cardinal to unanimously make it pope, it being recognised by a human pope as outright god etc.
Simply convincing a human pope that it has a soul would be even easier, the main limitation would probably be cases like e.g. it solving philosophy of mind and it turning out that AI genuinely doesn't have souls/consciousness, it pretending to humans it doesn't have a soul to appease our superiority complex, it outright ending Catholicism before it has a chance to recognise it etc.