Among the most striking passages of Magnifica Humanitas is one that will likely cause discomfort in much of contemporary European ecclesial discourse. Leo XIV states that “the promotion of the common good can never be separated from respect for the right of peoples to exist, to safeguard their own identity, and to contribute with their own originality to the family of nations.” He concludes with an even more forceful phrase: “Any attempt or project to eliminate or subjugate a nation is gravely immoral.”
This is not a secondary observation within the text. Nor does it appear to be a casual formulation. The encyclical introduces here an element of enormous importance at a historical moment marked by the accelerated weakening of European national identities and by a growing political, cultural, and even ecclesial tendency to view any defense of historical or cultural rootedness with suspicion.
For years, much of the dominant discourse in Europe has oscillated between two equally problematic extremes. On the one hand, a nationalism reduced to pure identity logic, detached from any transcendent moral reference. On the other, an abstract universalism that regards nations, traditions, and historical identities almost as uncomfortable obstacles to the construction of a homogeneous and manageable humanity.
The novelty of Leo XIV lies in his refusal to accept this false alternative.
The encyclical does not fall into ethnic nationalisms nor does it legitimize exclusionary withdrawals. But neither does it accept that the universal common good requires the dissolution of concrete peoples. On the contrary, it presupposes that nations possess their own moral legitimacy and that the historical diversity of peoples forms part of the very richness of humanity.
This introduces an evident tension with much of recent ecclesial rhetoric, especially in Western Europe.
In Spain, for example, the episcopal discourse on immigration, multiculturalism, and coexistence has often tended toward exclusively humanitarian categories, while any concern about cultural continuity, social cohesion, or the preservation of historical identity was quickly neutralized under moral suspicion. The impression conveyed many times was that Europe had to resignedly accept its own cultural dissolution, as if any will to preserve identity were incompatible with the Gospel.
It is difficult not to think here of certain interventions by Cardinal José Cobo or Luis Argüello, where the language of welcome and diversity is usually formulated from a very abstract perspective, almost detached from the question of the concrete historical rootedness of European peoples and their Christian cultural identity.
It is precisely here that Leo XIV introduces a decisive nuance. Universal fraternity does not require erasing nations. Nor does it require turning them into interchangeable realities without memory or historical continuity. The encyclical insists, on the contrary, on the right of each people to safeguard its own originality and to contribute from it to the whole of humanity.
The nuance is important because Christianity has never understood universality as the destruction of concrete identities. The Church did not eliminate the European peoples. It evangelized them. It did not destroy their cultures. It transformed them from within, preserving what could be integrated into a Christian civilization.
That is why the language used by Leo XIV is so significant. Speaking of peoples with the right to exist, to safeguard their identity, and to preserve their originality means recovering a much more incarnate vision of social and political life. In contrast to a certain contemporary tendency to reduce man to an isolated individual or a mere economic unit, the encyclical reminds us that the person also belongs to a history, a tradition, and a concrete cultural community.
Moreover, the overall context of Magnifica Humanitas makes this passage even more interesting. The entire encyclical constitutes a critique of the contemporary technocratic paradigm: a civilization increasingly oriented toward impersonal structures of management, control, and cultural homogenization. In that framework, the defense of peoples also acquires an anthropological meaning. A world composed of completely uprooted individuals is much more vulnerable to political, economic, and technological power.
A man without historical memory is easier to administer.
And the same is true of nations.
Leo XIV’s great intuition seems to be that the contemporary crisis affects not only the individual, but also historical civilizations. Peoples can disappear not only through military conquest, but also through cultural exhaustion, demographic fragmentation, loss of historical continuity, or the inability to transmit a recognizable identity to future generations.
That is why the phrase in the encyclical is so relevant. Because it breaks with the idea— increasingly widespread in certain Western circles—that every strong identity automatically constitutes a moral threat. Leo XIV does not propose idolatrous identities or absolute nationalisms. But neither does he accept an abstract humanity built upon peoples without memory, without roots, and without cultural continuity.
In today’s Europe, saying that already means breaking a taboo.