Thoughts on Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas

2026-08-30 | 7.5 min reading

These are some of my thoughts on Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas - On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence and the encyclical video presentation.

The future of artificial intelligence is in a building state; thus, the encyclical try to be a seed for discussion and awareness.

The direction that AI takes is not written into the technology itself. It depends on our choices, on the institutions that host and underpin that choosing, and on our ability to manage innovation responsibly to serve the common good.
—Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J.

The main challenges highlighted in the encyclical can be summarised in three points:

know how to use the tools but maintain inner freedom and liberty
accessing infinite data but retaining critical judgement and accountability
living in a digital environment while not losing joy in real encounters

At the centre of these three points us, the humans, the human limits and the human dignity.

100. In personal use, three aspects in particular deserve careful consideration: the ease with which results are obtained, the impression of objectivity and the simulation of human communication.
The speed and simplicity with which information, complex analyses, media content and practical assistance can be accessed undoubtedly makes life easier. Yet they can also encourage excessive reliance and the search for ready-made answers, and weaken personal creativity and judgment.

The apparent objectivity of the responses and suggestions these systems provide can lead us to overlook the fact that they reflect the cultural assumptions of those who designed and trained them, with all their strengths and limitations.

The artificial imitation of positive human communication — words of advice, empathy, friendship and even love — can be engaging and at times genuinely helpful. However, for less discerning users, it can also be misleading, creating the illusion of a relationship with a real personal subject. When words are simulated, they do not build genuine relationships, but only their appearance.

The artificial imitation of care or support can become particularly risky when it enters contexts where real relationships and emotional bonds are lacking.

Here, the danger is not so much that a person may believe they are communicating with another person, but rather that they may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections.

— Magnifica Humanitas, A valuable tool that requires vigilance

The Human Limits and The Human Dignity
Limit not as a defect, but as space where humans mature and foster compassion, empathy, understanding of the suffering of another person.

While dignity is all that makes humans worthy of calling ourselves humans.

178. Even today, colonialism assumes new forms. It no longer dominates only bodies, but appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information. Entire regions, especially those marked by structural fragility and limited geopolitical relevance, are currently subjected to a new mindset of extraction: that of health data, epidemiological profiles, genetic maps and demographic information. These have become the new “rare earths” of power: vital data which, once aggregated and analyzed, can be used to train predictive models, guide investment strategies, anticipate crises and, above all, determine who and what is deemed to matter.
— Magnifica Humanitas, An economy that values dignity

When we ask a machine to think for us, we lose freedom. Colonialism today shows a new face: it does not only dominate bodies, but it also appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information. The Global South must not lose its own human values to AI.
— Professor Léocadie Lushombo, Jesuit School of Theology, Santa Clara University

The risk of algorithms that create addiction and digital colonialism is already here.
And we have seem already how fragile can be a system in which few players can decide who can have access to AI.

Open Questions:

— What is human dignity?
— How can we prevent and recognise new forms of digital addiction and exploitation?
— How can we increase awareness of human dignity?

Market and Government

Every frontier AI lab—including Anthropic—operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.
The pressure to stay commercially viable and to stay at the research frontier. Geopolitical pressure. And the older, plainer pressures of pride and ambition.

No matter how sincerely any of us intend to do the right thing—and I believe many of us do—we will always be influenced by those incentives.

— Christopher Olah, Antorphic CO-Founder

Power must be transparent and exercised for the common good — not for false idols. We will not be saved by the market.
— Professor Anna Rowlands, Professor of Catholic Social Thought, Durham University

67. 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.

In turn, it widens the gap between the included and the excluded, between those who can participate in the digital revolution and those who remain on the margins. Furthermore, care for our common home and our responsibility toward the poor and future generations require that the use of the goods of creation and the new possibilities offered by technology be regulated in such a way as to respect the environment, avoid waste and prevent new forms of exploitation.

— Magnifica Humanitas, The principle of the universal destination of goods

From what we can see, AI companies do not yet have a clear vision of a future path, and they are rather in an exploration mode where the search for profit is the driver.

Also, most of what has been built by the frontier AI labs seems rooted on an unfair use of data that a competitor looking to obey the law would otherwise have no access to.

That is, if you were looking to obey the law, you would be automatically excluded from competing with the frontier labs.

Open Questions:

— What does legislation that protects human dignity and permits competition look like?
— How can we have a fair market where we share patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure and data?
— How can we ensure the gains of AI are shared globally?
— What does it look like for humans, families, and the world to flourish?

Delegating Agency and Accountability

Another key risk is related to accountability.
If people start to offload judgement to machines, who will be held accountable?

And given people willing to take responsibility, how will they manage the amount of data now available?

Self-guarding the capacity of mind to attend truth.
— Professor Léocadie Lushombo, Jesuit School of Theology, Santa Clara University

102. The use of AI is never a purely technical matter: when it enters processes that affect people’s lives, it touches on rights, opportunities, status and freedom. Important and sensitive decisions — concerning employment, credit, access to public services or even a person’s reputation — risk being fully delegated to automated systems that do not know “compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and above all, the hope that people are able to change,” and can therefore give rise to new forms of exclusion.
— Magnifica Humanitas, Responsibility, transparency and the governance of AI

102. There are clearly harmful uses, such as the manipulation of information or violations of privacy. Yet there is also a subtler danger, for when AI systems present themselves as neutral and objective, they end up reflecting and reinforcing the stereotypes or ideological bias of their designers and developers.
— Magnifica Humanitas, Responsibility, transparency and the governance of AI

103. Indeed, entrusting an algorithm in practice with the power to select who is worthy or not, without anyone bearing responsibility for that judgment, is to hand over the task of redefining the boundaries of human possibilities.
In this process, political responsibility is also lost, not just empathy toward those excluded, which can, after all, be simulated.

The exclusion of the vulnerable becomes cloaked in a veneer of neutrality and objectivity, against which it becomes difficult to raise objections.

In this way, injustice goes unnoticed, and compassion, mercy and forgiveness — understood not as mere appearances but as real political actions — gradually disappear from view.

— Magnifica Humanitas, Responsibility, transparency and the governance of AI

Among the dev communities, there are emerging discussions about the ethics and responsibility of agentic coding, touching from code review to transparency and sensitive data, while the bias of some models has already started to manifest, pushing for a monoculture.

Open Questions:

— Who will be accountable for a decision taken by a machine over a life of a person?
— How can we retain accountability over huge amounts of data?
— How can we increase awareness of AI bias so that we can mitigate the effects?
— If AI advertise only what is mainstream, where will innovation come from?

Digital Isolation

114. The quality of a civilization is measured not by the power of its means, but by the care it is able to offer, by its ability to recognize the other as a face not merely as a function.
The ability to care for one another is a fundamental dimension of our humanity, one that is learned and mastered through lived experience.

Reading stories to a child, offering company to an elderly person and arranging a home so that it is welcoming are simple gestures often rooted in family life.

They teach us to value care at a societal level and train us to recognize others as persons worthy of attention.

Technology can also support this mutual care between people, for example, by providing tools that help us anticipate and organize things, without undermining human freedom and judgment. After all, human beings are the subjects of relationships and responsible for their own decisions.

— Magnifica Humanitas, What must not be lost

The marketing practice of Anthropomorphism, that is, attaching human traits, emotions, and intentions to non-human brands, products, or mascots, for sure helps to sell.

But at what price in the case of AI?

Open Questions:

— What’s the real cost of anthropomorphising AI tools? How is it affecting human relationships?
— How can we strengthen local communities?
— How can we foster human connection and empathy?

Considerations

AI is still in a building state and legislators are struggling to responde to the fast changes happening.

Meanwhile, AI frontier labs are resorting to any strategy to stay relevant and gain market share.

In this context, Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas tries to be a pole of discussion and awareness, to stir the conversation and open a door so that we can all have our voice heard in the building of AI and this new era.

What I wrote here is just what touched me, with some fragments of Magnifica Humanitas and some open questions; it’s not all.

For this reason, I encourage you to read through Magnifica Humanitas - On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence and watch the encyclical video presentation.

Let us not be afraid to get our hands dirty on the “construction site” of our time.
— Magnifica Humanitas

Thoughts on Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas

Considerations

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