On May 15, 2026, Pope Leo XIV signed Magnifica Humanitas, the first encyclical dedicated to artificial intelligence. Far from a simple spiritual exercise, the text directly questions the place of humanity in the face of a technology increasingly concentrated in the hands of a handful of disconnected actors.
A Millennia-Old Institution Facing Technocratic Acceleration
It is a paradox that several observers have noted in recent weeks: the most substantial discussions on artificial intelligence are not coming from a Silicon Valley startup, but from the Vatican. One of the oldest institutions on the planet is examining the technological mutation of our time—a contrast that partly explains the curiosity generated by the papal encyclical, a solemn letter addressed to the entire Catholic Church.
The text opens with a biblical warning. According to the document published by the Catholic Church of France, humanity finds itself:
“faced with a decisive choice: to erect a new Tower of Babel or to build the city where God and humanity dwell together.”
A phrase that resonates as a warning addressed to a technological governance increasingly disconnected from the societies it transforms.
The Vatican as a Moral Counter-Power?
The analysis published by Le Grand Continent, signed by Alberto Melloni, highlights the polemical richness of the text. The encyclical does not settle for a consensual pastoral discourse: it embraces clearly identified polemical fronts, notably against certain tech figures (Peter Thiel is explicitly named) but also, internally, against previous theological lines—Ratzinger, Bergoglio.
This study identifies several structural axes of tension in the document:
- technological aporias: judgments passed on progress, labor, and computation;
- data governance, an eminently political issue slipped into a doctrinal text;
- the relationship between market and distributism, namely the question of the distribution of economic power;
- the intellectual debts of the text—an Augustinian matrix, borrowings from and departures from Thomism, and a distancing from Marx.
This intellectual architecture places the Holy See in an unusual posture: no longer merely the guardian of dogma, but an interlocutor—and even a challenger—to the architects of the global digital shift.
A Break with Traditional Social Doctrine
The encyclical fits into a precise genealogy traced by The Conversation. The first social encyclical in modern history, Rerum novarum, published by Leo XIII on May 15, 1891—exactly 135 years before Magnifica Humanitas, signed on the very same day of the calendar—had laid the foundations for defending the working-class condition in the face of the massive industrialization of the Western world.
From Leo XIII to Leo XIV, the analysis identifies a continuity but also a shift:
- 1891 — Rerum novarum: defense of the working-class condition, nostalgia for the social role of Catholicism in non-secularized societies;
- 1931 — Quadragesimo anno by Pius XI: continuation of this perspective under the aegis of Catholic universities;
- 2026 — Magnifica Humanitas: Leo XIV abandons the idea of the Church as a “besieged citadel” in the face of modernity, returning to biblical spiritual fundamentals rather than a Catholicism conceived as a societal counter-model.
According to Le Grand Continent, this evolution documents “a quiet upheaval in the Catholic Church’s relationship with the public sphere.”
Traditional Humanism vs. Algorithmic Governance
The theological core of the text remains, according to the official document, the defense of a conception of the human being based on intrinsic dignity. The encyclical asserts its desire to:
“actively participate in all those initiatives that build a more just world” and call for “the promotion of the integral development of every human being.”
This formulation, seemingly consensual, implicitly opposes a purely instrumental and calculative vision of humanity—the kind carried by the logic of algorithmic optimization championed by major global tech players. The study by Le Grand Continent also points out the “original nodes” of the text: going beyond the just war doctrine, the question of the falsifiability of social doctrine, and above all the function of public power in the face of democracy—all subjects that go far beyond the strict religious field to touch upon political sovereignty itself.
A Symbolic Impact for Digital Sovereignty
By entering a debate that has so far been largely monopolized by engineers, investors, and international technocratic forums, the Vatican reminds us that no innovation, no matter how disruptive, escapes questions of meaning, justice, and dignity. This institutional positioning, coming from an entity that thinks in terms of the long term rather than the fiscal quarter, implicitly constitutes a critique of the pace imposed by a handful of technological players on human societies as a whole.
It remains to be seen whether this papal voice, dense and well-documented as it may be, can carry weight against the inertia of already established power architectures—or whether it will remain, like Rerum novarum in its time, a foundational text whose effects will be measured over several decades rather than in the immediate term.
