In his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, Pope Leo XIV makes a striking intervention in one of the defining debates of our age. Published on 25 May 2026 and signed on 15 May, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the document places artificial intelligence within a wider moral and political argument about human dignity, work, truth, peace and the common good. Its central warning is both simple and urgent: technological change cannot be left to market power, corporate ambition or technical momentum alone. It must be governed by ethical judgment and public responsibility.
To make that case, Pope Leo clarifies what the Church’s Social Doctrine is — and what it is not. It is not a substitute for politics or public institutions. It is a framework of moral discernment, rooted in Christian anthropology and directed towards justice in social life. In this encyclical, Social Doctrine becomes a way of judging whether technological change truly serves the human person. Leo also places that tradition in historical perspective. Although Catholic social teaching developed gradually, the expression “Social Doctrine of the Church” gained wider currency under Pius XII, reflecting the Church’s long effort to accompany economic and social transformation with moral reflection.
Magnifica Humanitas then turns to the classical principle of the common good, understood in Catholic social teaching as the set of social conditions that allow individuals and communities to flourish more fully and more easily. That principle has far-reaching implications for the AI age. It implies interdependence, public responsibility and an active role for institutions in ensuring that the gains of technological change are broadly shared rather than privately enclosed. In that sense, Pope Leo decisively rejects any model of innovation that serves only a narrow circle of firms, states or experts.
From there, the argument becomes even sharper. By applying the principle of the universal destination of goods to the digital age, Pope Leo suggests that the resources shaping contemporary life — data, computing capacity, algorithms, platforms and technological infrastructure — cannot simply be treated as assets controlled by a few without wider social consequence. He is not arguing against innovation or property. He is arguing that technological power must be ordered towards human flourishing, social justice and wider access, so that AI does not deepen exclusion, dependency and inequality.
On AI itself, Pope Leo calls for technological projects that protect what he describes as the grandeur of humanity. He warns against reducing people to measurable outputs, predictive profiles or behavioural categories. Once technology becomes the standard by which human beings are judged, it no longer serves human development; it begins to reshape society according to its own logic. That is why the encyclical echoes Pope Francis’s critique of the technocratic paradigm: more computing power, greater speed and wider automation do not automatically amount to moral progress. They can just as easily entrench domination, manipulation and indifference.
The question, then, is not whether technology should advance but under what norms and for whose benefit it should do so. In Pope Leo’s view, progress is legitimate only when it improves the human condition and advances integral human development. That means keeping the human person at the centre, resisting notions of efficiency that erase moral limits and insisting that social and technological systems exist to serve people — not to train people to serve systems.
That leads directly to governance. Pope Leo confronts a defining reality of the AI revolution: decisive power today often lies less with states than with corporations that control data, computing power, platforms and the terms of access. But that concentration of power does not absolve public authorities of responsibility. It heightens it. The case for robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed citizens and political institutions willing to slow developments that outrun ethical reflection becomes stronger, not weaker. States remain indispensable if AI is to serve the common good rather than merely commercial or geopolitical advantage.
Because technological achievement can outrun moral and social progress, Pope Leo insists that discernment cannot be left to technical experts alone. He proposes the core principles of Catholic social teaching — human dignity, the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity, justice and the universal destination of goods — as criteria for judging whether AI is truly serving humanity. This is not simply a plea for regulation. It is a call for a broader civic and ethical imagination capable of resisting the normalisation of an anti-human idea of progress.
The encyclical also rejects the temptation to anthropomorphise AI. These systems may process vast amounts of data, generate persuasive language and simulate forms of reasoning but they do not possess conscience, embodiment, moral agency or the capacity for love, suffering and responsibility. That distinction matters. Because AI is already shaping decisions in employment, education, security, information and war, responsibility cannot be transferred to the machine. Accountability must remain human — located in the designers, deployers, regulators and political authorities who decide how these systems are built, used and constrained.
For Africa, the encyclical should be read as a call to strategic leadership, not passive adaptation. The continent cannot afford to remain on the margins of the AI revolution while others define its rules, infrastructure and rewards. African governments, universities, regulators, innovators and private actors must help shape how AI is designed, governed and deployed so that it advances development, protects dignity and responds to African priorities. That means moving questions of data governance, algorithmic bias, computing access, language inclusion and digital sovereignty to the centre of public policy. It also means investing in African research capacity, regulatory competence and digital infrastructure so that the continent does not merely consume imported systems but helps define the standards by which they are judged.
Pope Leo’s appeal is therefore more than a theological reflection. It is a summons to collective responsibility: to build technological futures that serve humanity. In that sense, the encyclical offers a powerful biblical contrast. We can approach AI in the spirit of Jerusalem — through solidarity, shared purpose and the common good — or repeat the logic of Babel, where pride, domination and concentrated power turn human ingenuity against itself.
Anthony Ohemeng-Boamah is an expert in African development and socioeconomic transformation.
He warns against reducing people to measurable outputs, predictive profiles or behavioural categories. Once technology becomes the standard by which human beings are judged, it no longer serves human development; it begins to reshape society according to its own logic
