The first major doctrinal encyclical of Leo XIV is already here. And after an initial reading of Magnifica Humanitas, it is clear that the new Pope did not intend to publish a mere document on “technological ethics,” but something far more ambitious: an integral response from the Church to the anthropological crisis opened by artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and the technocratic concentration of power.
Those expecting a technical text on algorithms are mistaken. Artificial intelligence is the setting. The true subject of the encyclical is man.
In that sense, the document recalls the great classical social encyclicals more than a text of the moment. Just as Leo XIII understood before many others that the industrial revolution was not merely an economic change, but a complete transformation of the social order, Leo XIV appears convinced that the digital revolution threatens to alter the very understanding of human nature.
That is why the expression that runs through the entire encyclical is the “safeguarding of the human.” The question is not simply what machines can do, but what will ultimately happen to the soul, freedom, truth, and dignity of man in a civilization organized around artificial systems capable of shaping behaviors, emotions, and perceptions.
The text carefully avoids both caricatured technophobia and naïve enthusiasm. Leo XIV does not demonize artificial intelligence. He acknowledges its possibilities in medicine, education, research, or social management. But he immediately introduces a decisive warning: technology can never become the supreme criterion for the organization of society.
Here appears one of the great key ideas of the encyclical: the main problem is not the machine, but the technocratic paradigm.
Leo XIV clearly gathers intuitions already present in Laudato si’, but develops them with a much more systematic, philosophical, and anthropological language. The document denounces a civilization in which efficiency ends up replacing truth, calculation supplants moral judgment, and the person risks being reduced to data, a predictable pattern, or a unit of consumption.
There are entire paragraphs that seem directed straight at the cultural logic of the major digital platforms, even though concrete names are barely mentioned. The Pope warns of the danger of systems capable of psychologically shaping the masses, conditioning habits, creating emotional dependence, and directing the collective perception of reality.
And here emerges one of the most novel aspects of the document: artificial intelligence is presented not only as an economic or labor issue, but as a spiritual and epistemological question.
That is to say: AI affects the way man knows reality.
Leo XIV’s concern is not limited to the automation of employment. He is concerned about who constructs the human imaginary, who filters truth, who decides what deserves to be seen, which emotions should be amplified, and which opinions should disappear. The underlying issue is the control of consciousness.
At times, the encyclical almost seems like a frontal critique of a civilization of permanent surveillance.
But probably the most striking element of Magnifica Humanitas is the space it dedicates to transhumanism and posthumanism. That does represent a significant novelty in the pontifical Magisterium.
Leo XIV does not treat transhumanism as a futuristic extravagance reserved for marginal laboratories, but as a genuine worldview rivaling Christianity. The idea of biologically surpassing man through technological integration, genetic manipulation, or the artificial expansion of capacities is described as a new Promethean attempt at self-salvation.
The Pope’s response is profoundly Christological.
Against the technocratic dream of an unlimited, autonomous, and self-sufficient man, Leo XIV upholds the dignity of the creature, the spiritual value of limitation, and the redemptive meaning of human vulnerability. In one of the most interesting passages of the document, he implicitly contrasts the technological “superman” with the logic of the Incarnation.
It is no coincidence that classical categories practically absent from recent ecclesial language reappear: Babel. Human nature. Truth. Grace. The two cities. The Incarnate Word.
At times, the text seems closer to the doctrinal tone of Benedict XVI than to the predominantly pastoral style of Francis.
Also especially relevant is the expansion Leo XIV makes of classical social doctrine regarding property and the common good. The encyclical suggests that data, algorithms, digital infrastructures, and artificial intelligence systems should be considered within the moral horizon of the universal destination of goods.
This could have enormous consequences.
Because the Pope is pointing out that the concentration of technological power in the hands of a few corporations does not constitute merely an economic problem, but a moral and social issue of the first order. In other words: the new struggle for world power no longer revolves solely around industrial or financial capital, but around the control of information, predictive models, and digital infrastructure.
Here we find a very serious updating of social doctrine for the data capitalism of the twenty-first century.
Another especially strong section concerns war and autonomous weapons. Although Leo XIV avoids maximalist formulations, the language used is extraordinarily severe regarding lethal automation and the progressive dehumanization of armed conflicts.
The concern is evident: systems capable of killing without immediate moral responsibility, without real human judgment, and without psychological limits.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the entire encyclical is what it does not do.
It does not propose technocratic solutions to the technocratic problem.
Leo XIV does not seem to believe that the crisis can be resolved solely through state regulation or legal oversight. He continually speaks of moral education, spiritual formation, cultural reconstruction, and an “asceticism of limits.” The document presupposes that no law will suffice if civilization itself loses the sense of the human.
That is probably the core of Magnifica Humanitas.
The encyclical is not a manual on artificial intelligence. It is a warning about a civilization tempted to replace Christian anthropology with a functional, mechanical, and ultimately dehumanized vision of man.
And in that sense, Leo XIV appears to have understood something fundamental: the decisive wars of the twenty-first century will not be merely economic or military. They will be anthropological.