On 25 May 2026 Leo XIV publishes his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, devoted to safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. The signature bears the date 15 May: exactly a hundred and thirty-five years after Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, the 1891 encyclical with which the Church first read, in a moral key, the industrial revolution and the condition of the worker. The choice of name and date is a declaration: as then before the factory, today before the machine that thinks.
The text takes its place in the line of the Church's social doctrine — from Rerum Novarum to Centesimus Annus, to Laudato si' — and carries that tradition into the new questions posed by artificial intelligence: the dignity of the person, work, the common good. The knots it addresses, as they emerge from the first readings, are four.
Work. There is the concrete possibility that AI will replace human labor on a large scale; supporting those who are displaced is presented as a duty, not optional charity.
War. A sharp alarm on AI applied to conflict; the strong image, picked up by the press, is that of an artificial intelligence to be disarmed so that it does not lead to domination, exclusion and death.
Digital slavery. The text warns against new forms of servitude in the digital era and, in the same movement, the Church apologizes for its own historical role in slavery: a gesture that binds past to present without discounts.
Property. A point that touches the heart of this blog: the ownership of AI's data and tools must not remain in solely private hands. It is a statement of principle with evident political weight. As a corollary, the appeal to governments and civil society for regulation and transparency, and to slow down where the race outstrips the capacity to govern it.
Two things, finally, with honesty. The first: the Pope broke a tradition and presented the text not alone, but beside a builder of these technologies, Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah. The second: it is the first major doctrinal document of this pontificate, over two hundred pages, and a serious reading will require the full text, not the first-day summaries — this one included.