Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere, promising to revolutionise the way we work, play and relate to each other. We’re being told that it will touch every aspect of our lives, offering potential new ways to improve health and drive technological innovation, and new ways to entertain ourselves and build relationships. And of course, there are numerous red flags about serious risks. But amid all the excitement and anxiety surrounding AI, what does all this mean for human beings? What should AI do, and what kind of society do we want it to help create? (Ref. 1)
Pope Leo explored these issues recently in his first Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, released on 15 May 2026 (as announced in the Parish Newsletter, 31 May 2026). In it, he shifts the conversation away from speculative science-fiction fears and towards the actual moral choices being made by engineers, corporations and governments right now, based on their own values and principles about what AI should be and what it should do. (Ref. 1)
At the heart of the Encyclical is the enduring principle of dignitas infinita – the infinite dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God. (Ref. 2)
His proposition is that technology can ‘heal, connect, educate and protect our common home’ but it ‘can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice’.
From this stance, it follows that the architects of AI cannot be allowed to control the full implementation of AI. (Ref. 3) While regulatory tools are needed, the Pope’s central message goes deeper: being reactive, relying on contingencies and emergencies won’t suffice, because the need is to recognise ‘who holds this power today and how they use it’.
The Pope wants AI to be disarmed. He said: “I would like to employ the expression ‘to disarm’ which is close to my heart. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage. For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible.”
‘Entrusting an algorithm in practice with the power to select who is worthy or not, without anyone bearing responsibility for that judgment, is to hand over the task of redefining the boundaries of human possibilities. In this process, political responsibility is also lost ….’ The exclusion of the vulnerable becomes cloaked in a veneer of neutrality and objectivity, against which it becomes difficult to raise objections. In this way, injustice goes unnoticed. (Ref. 3)
The Pope warned of social control arising from the massive collection of data: ‘When every action – movements, purchases, relationships and preferences – leaves a trace, a new form of power emerges, namely the power to profile, predict and influence – such as access to credit, employment or essential services – there is a risk of undermining human freedom. At the root of these problems lies a technocrat and post-humanist mentality that tends to regard the human person as an object to be manipulated or a resource to be optimised.’
Does AI possess a human consciousness? In a long passage, the Pope confronts this question, writing: “We must avoid the misconception of equating this type of ‘intelligence’ with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields.”
The Pope said while most people are ‘observing from afar and hoping for the best’, the central task is to identify ‘the spiritual and cultural roots’ of the ongoing AI transformation and, on this basis, understand how to respond. Pope Leo appeals to people across the world ‘to join forces in building up the common good’. Speaking to all men and women of goodwill the Pope says: “Let us not be afraid to get our hands dirty on the ‘construction site’ of our time.”
Warning that truth and human conscience are at stake, the Pope said those with technical power and economic resources could shape cultural change: ‘Ultimately, they can influence a significant number of people concerning the truth about humanity, the world, the meaning of existence, the family and even God. This is pure power detached from truth … At its root lies a deeper and often unrecognised ‘sickness’: the fact that modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society … In such a context, universally valid truths, which preclude us and which conscience must accept, are no longer recognised.”
In this, his first Encyclical, the Pope has completely recast the benefits of AI and the threat it poses to humanity.
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If you are interested in joining or finding out more about the Our Lady of Pentecost Parish Social Justice Group, please contact Michael Ryan on 0400 602 402 or email [email protected]
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