The Encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” by Leo XIV, a foundational text on AI (1/3)

In the first encyclical of his pontificate, Leo XIV addresses both the immense benefits and the present and potential dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) , a technological advance without precedent in human history, but also a formidable tool capable of enslaving humanity and distorting what it means to be human. He argues for “the possibility of peace” in an age convinced that “war is inevitably part of human nature.”

The parallel between Magnificent Humanity and Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) is evident, down to its very form: Leo XIV symbolically signed his text on 15 May 2026, the 135th anniversary of the foundational encyclical of Catholic social teaching. The pope had already explained that he chose his regnal name to honour Leo XIII, drawing a direct parallel between the upheavals of the first industrial revolution and those of artificial intelligence.

In 1891, the encyclical Rerum novarum, which was to inspire the whole of the Church’s social doctrine in the 20th century, set out a number of principles emphasizing that the economy and technical progress in general, then undergoing profound transformation, must remain at the service of the human person and not the reverse. At the height of the industrial revolution, Pope Leo XIII sought to warn against the danger posed to humanity, on the one hand by the rise of unrestrained capitalism, and on the other by the socialist project of a state-controlled economy.

Among these major principles were the dignity of the worker; the duty of the state to care for the common good; the universal destination of goods, as opposed to their appropriation by a few; subsidiarity, according to which a higher authority should only undertake what lower levels cannot accomplish on their own; the legitimacy of both trade unionism and private property; and the need for a preferential option for the poor.

An “Augmented” Legacy

The encyclical Magnifica humanitas has been widely regarded as a foundational text for the digital age, comparable to Rerum novarum for the industrial revolution. It builds on this legacy and adapts it to the new digital environment, as “artificial intelligence must be understood not as a peripheral theme, nor as an emergency to be managed, but as a transformation that challenges from within the categories of social doctrine” (§17). For many intellectuals, Leo XIV emerges, thanks to this document, as the man of the moment.

Thus, the encyclical extends the universal destination of goods to digital data: “Patents, algorithms, digital infrastructures are goods that cannot remain concentrated in the hands of a few” (§67). Another example: the encyclical redefines subsidiarity, as the “higher level” is no longer embodied by the state but by the major technological platforms that shape access to public life (§71).

The Whole of Society Addressed

Like the great social encyclicals of the Catholic tradition, Magnifica humanitasaddresses society as a whole. It is a universal appeal directed as much to algorithm designers and political leaders as to ordinary citizens, believers or not, to place the inalienable dignity of the human person back at the center of innovation.

The encyclical is marked by a strong doctrinal fidelity. It draws on the concepts of John Paul II concerning the dignity of human work (Laborem exercens), of Benedict XVI on integral human development in the face of technology (Caritas in veritate), and of Francis on the universal destination of goods and the critique of the technocratic paradigm (Laudato si’) and on the promotion of fraternity against the digital individualism transmitted through screens (Fratelli tutti).

Theological Relevance

“Humanity must be restored to the awareness that it is something great,” Pope Benedict XVI once wrote. By its title alone, Leo XIV’s encyclical directly echoes this aspiration.

“Magnificent Humanity” is one that must be seen “in the face of the Son,” the American pope states (§133). A Son “through whom and for whom all things were created” (Col 1:16), but who presented himself to his contemporaries and to the world as “the Son of Man,” the brother of all (Fratelli tutti).

In this sense, Magnificent Humanity is a strongly “personalist” encyclical that places the human person “at the center,” not at the periphery of human activity. It is also deeply moral in tone. But it is not a question of personal morality; rather, it concerns morality as shaped by the advent and use of this extraordinary tool that is AI – in particular the morality of its modes of production, of relations between rich and poor nations, of the relationship between capital and labor, of the concentration of cognitive, economic and political power in the hands of multinational corporations or individuals. It is also the morality of the use of digital power in the field of education,whether for civilian or military purposes, or for the common good or for criminal intent.

A Great Spiritual Blindness

The encyclical is also moral in its judgment of our time, marked, according to the pope, by “a great spiritual and cultural blindness.” §204 reads: “We live in an age of great spiritual and cultural blindness. A false pragmatism invites us to sever the roots of memory, as if one could inaugurate a kind of ‘new creation’ severed from the past; even those who invoke great moral principles can fall into this historical nihilism, lulled by the illusion that the atrocities of the twentieth century (ed. note: those of the two World Wars and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet Gulag, the Shoah, and the rice fields of Cambodia…) can no longer be repeated. In reality, the same dynamics resurface in new forms.”

As we can see today in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and even in old Europe.

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