On May 15, 2026, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Leo XIV signed his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, “on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” The Vatican presented it publicly on May 25 as a major social encyclical for the digital age.
The title already gives away the disease.
Magnifica humanitas. Magnificent humanity. The grandeur of man. The splendor of the human person.
A Catholic encyclical on artificial intelligence could have begun with God, creation, original sin, the limits of fallen reason, the demonic temptation to “be as gods,” and the public rights of Christ the King over every human invention. It could have warned that modern technology becomes especially dangerous when placed in the hands of men who have rejected grace, law, nature, hierarchy, penance, and the last end of man.
Instead, we get the familiar postconciliar arrangement: Christ appears, but man remains center stage. Grace appears, but as a kind of elevation of human potential. Sin appears, but usually in the social, structural, humanitarian way. The Church speaks, but too often as a concerned moral partner of global civilization rather than the divinely commissioned teacher of nations.
That is the real story of Magnifica humanitas.
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