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Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical offers theological and humanistic insights into the potential and risks of artificial intelligence for human dignity.
It is also a declaration of the “dream of a new modernity,” in which the Catholic Church, nations, peoples, and international institutions collaborate to create ways of inhabiting the world that are worthy of every human being.
In his encyclical Magnificent Humanity (MH), Pope Leo XIV proposes two ways of inhabiting the world as a starting point for reflecting on human dignity in the digital age.
The first is the “dream of Babel,” a totalizing project that can only be achieved by destroying all differences. This scene imagines an all-encompassing, supreme power that aims to transcend the subtle boundary between heaven and earth, which God established through creation.
The second draws on the scene in the Book of Nehemiah depicting the reconstruction of the walls of Jerusalem “brick by brick.” Here, the material reconstruction of the city symbolizes building the human community as a project in which everyone participates—without exclusion.
This is a metaphor for collective power shared by many that restores the city, upon which God’s glory rests, to its role as the human place that, in Jesus, will become the tent pitched by God among us.
Cultural birth of human dignity
These two opposing ways of inhabiting the world are both embodiments of human dignity, as Pico della Mirandola first articulated in his work Oratio de hominis dignitate.
For Pico, human dignity stems from the indeterminacy with which God places human beings in the world. Unlike the rest of creation, human beings are not governed by a fixed law determining their place and purpose within the created order.
Human beings are the only living beings who must determine themselves, deciding how to inhabit the world, what direction to give it, and how to relate to their fellow human beings.
“The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted by laws that we have laid down. You, by contrast, unhindered by any such restrictions, may, by your own free will—to whose care we have entrusted you—trace the contours of your own nature. It will be within your power to descend to lower, brutish forms of life. You will be able to rise again to superior orders whose life is divine” (Pico della Mirandola).
Pico’s phenomenology is ahead of its time. He interprets human reality through the work of redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ. He acknowledges the depths to which human beings are capable of sinking but also recognizes the “possibility” that Jesus has made available to everyone. This indeterminacy is precisely what defines the inherent dignity of every human being.
Above all, it tells us that human dignity, however unalterable because willed by God Himself, is not a concept but a reality to be realized anew at every moment.
Therefore, the only way to honor this dignity—to bring it into being—is to realize it in the practice of everyday life, from the most astonishing scientific discoveries to neighborly relationships and political choices, and in hospitality toward the stranger, who is truly one of us and never an outsider. Never one without the other.
When human dignity appeared in Western civilization, it was affirmed as a practical matter concerning the construction of society, the relationship with nature, and the opening up of a new “possibility” with every discovery and advancement.
According to Pico, inhabiting the world in a way that preserves the cultural markers through which previous generations sought to make it welcoming to humanity represents the core of our relationship with the God of the Incarnation. In this relationship, humanity’s ability to give practical expression to its dignity is put to the test.
The School of Salamanca later brought the theme of human dignity to the theological, philosophical, and legal spheres in order to affirm the full humanity of the indigenous peoples of the newly discovered lands across the ocean. This also marked the beginning of what we now call international law.
The global community of nations subsequently affirmed human dignity as the foremost principle of fundamental human rights following the terror and horror of World War II on December 10, 1948. Mindful of its guilt and responsibility for the Holocaust, post-Nazi Germany made human dignity the first article of its Basic Law, which took effect on May 23, 1949: “Human dignity shall be inviolable.
To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.”
MH and the Catholic Church
Pope Leo draws upon the great tradition of European humanism, integrating the Catholic Church’s actions into that tradition.
MH marks the shift—already initiated by Pope Francis—in the Church’s public presence, shifting the focus from individual morality to the social ethics of the Catholic faith. Therefore, for the Church itself, the way it inhabits the world becomes a profession of faith in the God who, in Jesus, made the world and its vicissitudes the tent of his presence in human history.
This paradigm shift stems from the realization that the exclusivity granted to individual morality has proven insufficient to effectively imprint the Gospel on contemporary societies.
The weight attributed to positions on individual morality in the public life of Catholics has also functioned as an internal criterion within the Church for selecting individuals who could rely on support and recognition from the Vatican in political life.
On this point, the distance taken by American bishops from Biden is exemplary, in contrast to the discreet but convinced closeness of Pope Francis.
Furthermore, during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, issues of individual morality were used more as a tool to oppose the legislative activity of states than as a constructive contribution to the human community.
MH does not render individual morality obsolete in public affairs but rather links it structurally to the social dimension of action. This shapes a way of inhabiting today’s world that can practically honor the dignity of every human being and social collective through which people and nations organize their coexistence.
In this sense, there is no good life for the individual without effective justice for humanity as a whole. Every lack of justice, every violation of human dignity, and every failure to do justice is the responsibility of every person, both as a believer and a citizen.
This approach to navigating the Church’s social doctrine amid the “change of age” (Pope Francis) disturbs and unsettles worldly powers that claim absolute dominion over the world and the ways human beings inhabit it.
It represents a radical challenge to the all-encompassing power that seems to characterize the primary interest of today’s digital techno-financial system, much like the “dream of Babel.”
Pope Leo’s Church recognizes that to fulfill the evangelical mission of liberating the world from digital totalization, it must collaborate with other agencies to develop ways of inhabiting the world that embody the dignity of every individual and all peoples.
Affirming the evangelical primacy of the social realm means placing institutions at the center of human practices and faith today. The social dimension of faith is certainly directed toward real people in their concrete life situations.
However, if this practice is to transform the conditions in which those people live, it must also involve the institutions of humanity and peoples. Private individualism and economic neoliberalism have converged to dismantle the institutional framework of human coexistence and global governance.
In their struggle to survive, institutions of modernity have failed to sustain themselves while simultaneously upholding their purpose of fostering human coexistence.
With MH, the Catholic Church enters the “new era” of our world as well. Pope Leo affirms the necessity of institutions, including the state, democracy, multilateralism, and international law, which the Church had previously viewed with extreme suspicion.
Furthermore, the Church recognizes that these institutions can act autonomously in exercising power, something it had previously reserved only for itself. This encyclical represents a kind of “dream of a new modernity,” in which the Catholic Church and public institutions collaborate to create a world fit for human habitation.
However, it also denounces the current trend toward privatizing state institutions and using them for personal gain, which supports the totalization of power and the world that seems to lie at the heart of the interests driving the digitization of the world itself.
Marcello Neri is senior fellow at Appia Institute (Religion and Politics); professor of ethics and political anthropology at the Higher Institute of Educational Sciences G. Toniolo of Modena; and professor of “Religion and Public Square” at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University in Milan.
This article first appeared on Appia Institute and is republished with kind permission.
