Pope Leo XIV presents Magnifica humanitas: "It is urgent to remain profoundly human"

“In the time of artificial intelligence, in which the human dignity risks being obscured from new forms of dehumanization, we have the urgent duty to remain profoundly human, safeguarding with love that magnificent humanity that has been given to us and shown to us in its fullness in Christ, and that no machine can ever replace in its splendor”. The first encyclical of Pope Leo

The document, signed by the Pontiff last May 15, on the 135th anniversary of the promulgation of the Leo XIIIaddresses one of the main challenges of the contemporary era. Divided into five chapters, plus an introduction and a conclusion, Magnifica humanitas starts from an assumption: technology is not an “antagonistic force with respect to the person”, nor “in itself an evil”. However, it “is not neutral, because it takes on the face of those who think about it, finance it, regulate it, use it”.

Hence, the Pontiff’s call to “build for good” ea “stay human“, following the logic of courageous co-responsibility, subsidiarity, communion, so that “the world can recognize… in the heart of the human being the place where God wishes to live”.heartfelt appeal” by Leone is: do not fear “to get our hands dirty in the construction site of our time” to put “God back on the horizon of our actions and the human being at the center of our choices”.

What is he talking about

The encyclical begins with the Social Doctrine of the Church which is not a simple list of norms, but a path of discernment capable of reading history in the light of the Gospel, a “theology of communion in history”, called to interpret the changes of the contemporary world without losing reference to the dignity of the person. The encyclical recalls that the Church does not want to overlap with politics or the State, but to accompany humanity in its concrete wounds. In the second chapter Leone enumerates the Foundations and principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church: among the first, the dignity of the person, created in the image and likeness of God.

it is necessary to remember this because “the pressure of new ideologies and certain very powerful interests” can reduce the person to “a resource to be used and exploited” or to “what he achieves or produces”. On the contrary, “the fundamental dignity of every person is not acquired and deserved, nor does it need to be demonstrated”.

A second foundation is the inviolability of human rights, the first of which is that of life “from conception to its natural conclusion”. In this regard, the Pope defines induced abortion, the killing of innocents and euthanasia as “gravely illicit choices”. The third foundation is the recognition of the rights of minorities, with particular attention to women: in their favor, the Pontiff asks “concrete choices” in the lawsin work, in education, in social and political responsibilities, so that they are truly listened to and valued.

Speaking of AI, Leone looks at war to make us reflect on how the digital revolution is changing “the grammar of conflicts” and how the “boundary between protection and aggression” tends to blur. “AI enters these processes as an acceleration factor”, it can enhance the defense and protection of civilians, but it can also “lower the threshold for the use of force, make responsibilities opaque, fuel a culture in which the enemy is reduced to a given and the victim to ‘collateral damage'”. For the Pontiff, without an ethical approach, decisions on the life and death of people will be increasingly impersonal, with the use of force considered an “immediate and practicable option”

Humanity “is slipping into the violent culture of power”, where peace is “a precarious interval between conflicts”. Leone states that “today it is more important than ever to reiterate the overcoming of the ‘just war’ theory, too often invoked to justify any war, without prejudice to the right to legitimate defense understood in the strictest sense”.

“There is no algorithm that can make war morally acceptable”

“There is no algorithm that can make war morally acceptable“, he says, warning against the “incessant development of weapons systems, in particular of weapons linked to AI”. It “does not remove conflict from its intrinsic inhumanity”, thus, “it accustoms us to the idea that violence is inevitable and must only be optimised”. Furthermore, for Prevost, “the enormous economic interests behind war” cannot be ignored, a market that thrives precisely thanks to conflicts, “an economic logic that contributes to fueling tensions in different regions of the world”.

“The military arsenals enjoy new attention” and “the erroneous belief that nuclear deterrence is an indispensable condition of security has spread, with the result of fueling a new and difficult to control arms race, accompanied by the progressive dismantling of nuclear arms reduction agreements and the development of ‘miniaturized’ weapons, which make it easier to consider their use as a viable option”.

Although today humanity is capable of falling into levels of indifference, cynicism and cruelty to the point of murdering thousands of children and innocents in wars that were even contrary to international law, Pope Leo XIV did not give up calling it “magnificent”. Even in the face of this moral abyss, in fact, the Pontiff recalls that in man, although wounded by sin, the imprint of God continues to shine. For this reason, at the conclusion of the letter, he invites the faithful to inhabit new technologies in the light of the Gospel, following “a sober and demanding path of Christian life”, so that even in the age of artificial intelligence every person can bear witness to “the beauty of a magnificent humanity inhabited by God”.