What ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ Says, Simply Explained (With Surprises)

Will Magnifica Humanitas still be quoted 125 years from now, as Rerum Novarum is still quoted, or will AI have taken over by then and repress references to its dangers?

From Aleteia

By Daniel Esparza

Rerum Novarum met the Industrial Revolution. Magnifica Humanitas meets artificial intelligence — and asks us to choose between Babel and the City of God. Here's one quote from each chapter.

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII looked at a world being torn apart by industrialization and wrote Rerum Novarum—a letter that forever changed how the Church engaged with society. On May 15, 2026, exactly 135 years later, Pope Leo XIV signed Magnifica Humanitas. The occasion is different, but the urgency is the same.

The encyclical is long, theologically rich, and at moments surprisingly bold. Here is what each chapter says — and one element in each that might catch you off guard.

Introduction: Two cities, one choice

Leo XIV opens with two biblical images: the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Nehemiah. One is a project of pride and uniformity; the other is slow, communal, and rooted in God. The whole encyclical flows from this choice. Are we building Babel—efficient, powerful, dehumanizing—or Jerusalem, brick by patient brick?

Chapter 1: A living tradition

The Pope traces the Church’s social teaching from Leo XIII through Francis, showing how each pontiff responded to the crises of his time. The line runs from workers’ rights through nuclear war, environmental collapse, and global inequality.

Surprise: Leo XIV doesn’t just apply Social Doctrine to AI. He says AI actively challenges its categories from within—and demands that the tradition develop further. Number 17 reads.

“Artificial intelligence […] should not be considered as merely yet another theme to be studied or a crisis to be managed, but rather as a development that challenges the categories of Social Doctrine from within, calling for their further development in fidelity to the Gospel”

Chapter 2: The principles that don’t change

Here the encyclical restates foundational pillars: human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, solidarity, social justice, and integral human development. Solid, familiar ground — until it isn’t.

Surprise: Leo XIV explicitly includes algorithms, data, digital platforms, and patents under the principle of the universal destination of goods. Data is not a tech company’s property. It belongs, in a real sense, to everyone. Number 67 reads:

“Today, among the goods that are universally intended for everyone, we must also include new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure and data. In a context where the wealth of nations depends increasingly on knowledge and technology, when these goods remain concentrated in the hands of a few, without adequate forms of sharing and access, a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods”

Chapter 3: What AI is, and what it isn’t

This is the doctrinal heart of the letter. AI, Leo XIV writes plainly, is not human intelligence. It processes data. It cannot feel, suffer, love, or bear moral responsibility. It can simulate empathy without understanding it. That matters enormously when we hand it power over people’s lives.

Surprise: The Pope calls for AI to be “disarmed” — freed from the logic of geopolitical and commercial competition, from monopolistic control, and returned to the plurality of human cultures. Number 110 reads:

“Finally, I would like to employ the expression “to disarm,” which is close to my heart. Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of “armed” competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life. Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage. For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible.”

Chapter 4: Truth, work, and freedom

Chapter four is the most wide-ranging. It covers disinformation and democracy, the transformation of work by automation, the fragility of families under economic pressure, the dangers of digital addiction, and the exploitation of workers hidden inside AI supply chains.

Surprise: In a passage on modern slavery and the digital economy, Leo XIV formally apologizes—in the name of the Church—for her historical complicity in the institution of slavery. It is a remarkable moment of institutional humility inside a document about the future. Number 176 reads:

It is true that past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available. Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery. In antiquity and the Middle Ages many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves. Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from Sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of “infidels.” It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII.

Chapter 5: The Civilization of Love

The final chapter turns to war. It is blunt: military spending is rising, ethical limits are eroding, and AI is making lethal decisions faster and more impersonally than ever.

Surprise: Leo XIV states clearly that traditional just war theory is now outdated. In a world of autonomous weapons and hybrid warfare, the old framework cannot hold. Diplomacy, dialogue, and multilateralism are the only realistic path forward. Number 192 reads:

Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness. The use of force, violence and weapons reflects a relational poverty that always has disastrous consequences for civilian populations.

Conclusion: Nehemiah’s lesson

The encyclical closes with a practical program: stay faithful to truth, invest in education, cultivate real relationships, love justice and peace. The image is Nehemiah, sleeves rolled up, rebuilding wall by wall. That, Leo XIV suggests, is what it looks like to be Catholic in the age of artificial intelligence.