IN hs encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas,” Pope Leo XIV called for AI to be “disarmed,” a word that can imply a military or a charm offensive. Marco Iacobucci | Dreamstime.com.
It was billed as Pope Leo XIV’s “AI encyclical.” But in many ways, the first encyclical by the first U.S.-born pope used the theme of technology to thread together the broader themes of his year-old papacy – war and peace, slavery and dignity, hopelessness and purpose, said Dan Rober, Ph.D., associate professor and chair of Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield.
The 42,300-word encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” was noteworthy not only for what it said but the unprecedented manner in which it was delivered – in a conference-style format at the Vatican on Monday, May 25 – Memorial Day – with Anthropic, which ran afoul of the Pentagon in February over its refusal to allow unrestricted use of its Claude AI models, as co-presenter. It was an occasion, Rober added, that was emblematic of a tech- and narrative-savvy pope with a strong viewpoint who is nonetheless willing to entertain those of others.
The event also took place 10 days after the encyclical was signed, May 15, the 135th anniversary of “Rerum Novarum,” Pope Leo XIII’s seminal work on workers’ rights in the Industrial Age, considered a cornerstone of Roman Catholic teaching on social justice. (The current Leo’s encyclical was also aligned, Rober said, with the criticism of the “technocratic paradigm” of technology, power and money laid out by predecessor Pope Francis in his environmental encyclical “Laudato Si.”)
Like “Rerum Novarum,” “Magnifica Humanitas” has a great deal to say to both the business and political communities about the need for regulation in an industry that can be used for good or for ill. The United States is a country where the impression of who people are is often cast by what they do. But Leo XIV’s encyclical stresses that “people do not derive their dignity from work,” Rober said. Rather, dignity is intrinsic to each one of us. And to that point, the pope, who has African and Caribbean roots, apologized for the Catholic Church’s role in encouraging the slave trade.
While we may not derive our dignity from work, however, we do derive meaning from it and, in many cases, a kind of identity. Here the pope called for a regulated AI to ensure jobs and fair compensation – although, Rober said, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was less hopeful in his presentation on job retention.
The pope tied AI to purpose in other ways. Students who rely too much on artificial intelligence short-change the development of their skills and job potential. Middle-aged men are turning to AI rather than actual relationships to combat their loneliness.
Much has already been written, however, about loneliness and the erosion of education in the age of AI. What is perhaps more striking in the encyclical is what Rober called its deepening of Leo’s thinking on “just war theory.”
The theory, promulgated by St. Augustine – to whose order Leo belongs – and St. Thomas Aquinas, holds that war can be justified under certain limitations. It was the subject of much discussion last month as President Donald J. Trump reacted to the pope’s opposition to the war in Iran.
Now as technology permeates every aspect of society, the encyclical concluded, the idea of a just war that is limited to combatants, leaving civilian infrastructure intact, is obsolete. Will this put Leo again on a collision course with the Trump Administration? Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum criticized “Magnifica Humanitas” on Fox Business, saying, “I didn’t know that tech editorializing was part of the role of being pope,” although Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert who had earlier clashed with the pope on just war theory, hailed the “bits and pieces” of the encyclical he had read as “very profound.”
Trump himself is less likely to clash with Leo on the encyclical, Rober said, than to find it a challenge and a balancing act as he navigates his own agenda amid a sea of the pope’s teachings and popularity.
