Thou shalt not replace humanity: A commentary on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI and the digital age

On 15 May 2026, Pope Leo XIV issued his inaugural encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“The Grandeur of Humanity”), subtitled On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. The encyclical addresses a broad range of issues arising from technological transformation, including digital ethics, the changing nature of work, surveillance, information integrity, democratic participation, and the commodification of the human person in the digital economy. This commentary examines Magnifica Humanitas as an interdisciplinary text within the convergence of Catholic social teaching, philosophy of technology, and contemporary debates on technology governance. Rather than approaching the encyclical solely as a theological or pastoral document, the paper considers it as a normative intervention in ongoing discussions concerning the governance of emerging technologies and the preservation of human agency under conditions of rapid technological change. It argues that Magnifica Humanitas advances a coherent framework for understanding the ethical and social implications of artificial intelligence, offering perspectives that extend beyond religious discourse and engage broader legal and policy concerns. In this respect, the encyclical constitutes a noteworthy contribution to contemporary debates on regulation, accountability, and the institutional conditions necessary for human flourishing in the digital age.

I. Introduction 

When the conclave elected Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV in May 2025, few anticipated that his first encyclical letter would arrive so quickly, or that it would engage so directly with a subject more commonly associated with Silicon Valley boardrooms than Vatican corridors. Yet Magnifica Humanitas (hereinafter the Encyclical), issued on 15 May 2026, is precisely that.3 A theologically grounded but intellectually wide-ranging engagement with artificial intelligence (AI) as one of the most consequential transformations in human history. The encyclical consciously positions itself within the 135-year tradition of Catholic Social Teaching inaugurated by Leo XIII\'s Rerum Novarum in 1891.4 It is a document that speaks to governance architects, legislators, technologists, and ethicists who may share none of the Pope\'s theological commitments but who share his alarm at the speed and opacity of AI\'s penetration into the structures of human life. The Magnifica Humanitus opens with a metaphorical framing.

"Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together."

 The Tower of Babel was humanity’s attempt to build a single towering city and monument reaching the heavens, unified by one language and one ambition. The project ultimately collapsed into confusion and fragmentation. The Tower of Babel metaphor runs through the entire document as a diagnostic of what AI development, if left ungoverned, threatens to become. Simply, a civilization organized around centralized technological power and control that eventually fractures under its own excesses. Against this model, the Pope offers the image of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. This is a collaborative, distributed, and participatory reconstruction achieved not through domination but through shared responsibility. He in the end frames two competing visions of technological governance: centralized technocratic control versus subsidiarity, democratic participation, and accountability read more...