Bending the Arc

It’s here! Pope Leo’s first encyclical titled Magnifica Humanitas on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence was released May 25, 2026. At 42,000 words, it is slightly longer than Laudato Si’. Watch the recorded launch and hear Leo’s message here.

This America Media article summarizes Pope Leo’s first encyclical and includes this 5-minute audio clip from Inside the Vatican podcast.

Born out of a process of listening from multiple sources, Magnifica Humanitas offers a disturbing conviction that “AI needs to be disarmed” and warns us AI could become a new “Tower of Babel,” sharing an apocalyptic vision of a world defined by greed, immorality and lack of respect for human life.

Pope Leo’s encyclical also addresses slavery. He apologies for the church’s legitimization of slavery in the past, its failure to denounce it earlier than it did, and highlights the “new forms of slavery” propagated by technological developments - including people condemned to data labeling, model training and content moderation, as well as those who labor to extract rare minerals for tech devices. He stated that Catholics cannot "deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery." Read more in this NCR article and follow up with this article from the Black Catholic Messenger.  

Although Pope Francis had previously rejected invoking just war theory to justify “preventative” acts of war (in Fratelli Tutti), Leo’s statement goes further in asserting that technological developments have decidedly altered the moral conditions on which just war theory had been formed and calls it outdated. Read more in the NCR article.

Here is another review of Magnifica Humanitas by internationally acclaimed spiritual theologian, Matthew Fox: https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/about-matthew-fox/ 

Rev. Cameron Trimble also writes about the new encyclical and offers reflection questions, prayer and spiritual practice in her daily post here.

The full encyclical is available to read online or can be purchased online from sites such as OSV.