By Michael Haynes, European Conservative.
“We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace,” the American pontiff wrote in his first encyclical.
For readers expecting a simple text presenting the Vatican’s policy regarding the usage of Artificial Intelligence, Pope Leo’s May 5 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas will have delivered far more of a catechetical lesson than they expected.
When word broke that Leo XIV’s first major papal text–an encyclical–was going to be on AI, it certainly raised eyebrows. Many welcomed it, anticipating it would set forth precise guidelines for how the Holy See deemed such technology should be used; others were surprised at the priority given to a non-spiritual matter by the successor to St. Peter. In actuality, both expectations were somewhat wrong.
True, Magnifica Humanitas without doubt deals with the question of AI and also technology somewhat more generally. Leo notes that “we are living through a rapid phase of transition” and that the “era of AI” has already arrived. He is also keen to note the link between Magnifica Humanitas and his name-sake Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, which also dealt with the Catholic Church’s social doctrine and the manner in which the “the proclamation of the Gospel cannot overlook the concrete lives of people.”
But that is by no means the sum of the encyclical. In fact, one could argue that the text regarding AI forms but a strong minority of the text. What Leo has written is essentially a catechism for a secular world, in an attempt to school readers inside and outside of the Church about the true meaning of human existence and the resulting consequences of every action in light of that fact.
“We live at a time of significant spiritual and cultural blindness,” he warned.