While reading Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, I thought of St. Carlo Acutis, the first millennial saint proclaimed by Leo last year.

As my colleague Father Nick Meisl noted in one of his blogs, Carlo Acutis grew up in our world of Internet and technology, “but at the heart of his life was a profound love for Jesus in the Eucharist and for Our Lady.”

Magnifica Humanitas, a wide-ranging discussion of the principles of social doctrine, champions many of Pope Leo’s key themes: dignity of the human person, the call for true peace, and the non-negotiable values of social justice. The encyclical’s subtitle locates the gist of this call to action: “Safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.”

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As if to prepare us for the idea, Acutis used the Internet to spread devotion to the Eucharist, “but his choices and creativity all flowed from his identity as a disciple of Christ.”

Whenever I am asked to identify a motivating factor in my faith life and the mission of our Catholic universities and colleges, I frame it in the dignity of the human person. I am not a theologian, but this has always been the binding glue of my faith life, that Christ championed this most essential rule: our duty is to protect and work to ensure the dignity of every human person, regardless of race, gender, or social standing. As people of faith, every undertaking should be predicated on this principle.

How, then, does artificial intelligence factor into this equation? For many, from artists to social workers to educators, AI threatens to replace their very purpose. The fear already identified, and to some extent witnessed, is that AI threatens to remove their primary function, and in the process erase their identity.

Pope Leo’s encyclical specifically warns against this danger, urging us to develop clear and ethical guidelines to govern how AI must be constrained to serve the common good, to place human beings ahead of a technology that threatens to erase our very humanity.

Not surprisingly, an earlier Pope Leo wrote a similar encyclical, Rerum Novarum (1891), 135 years ago, to warn against the dangers of industrialization. It threatened to displace countless millions of workers, replacing their core roles and, in a dark irony, locking others into an exploitative workspace that turned humans into “cogs in a machine.”

Automation – AI – in stripping us of our humanity threatens to turn humans into the ghost in the machine.

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Pope Leo is careful not to demonize technology itself, but rather to make clear that it must be in service of humanity, not its replacement. As such, a key focus of the encyclical is to identify the need to “govern” knowledge ethically and judiciously. It isn’t technology that generates risk, but who controls it.

As Leo writes, “In the past, it was largely up to the State to guide and direct innovation. Today, however, the main drivers of development are private, often transnational, parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments.” 

It should also be said that even when governments have their hand partially on the wheel, ethical guidance is not always assured.

Pope Leo opens his encyclical with a reference to the Tower of Babel, urging us to put humanity above an “idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language – even a digital one  – can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.”

His key question resonates: Do we want to construct a Tower of Babel anew, or “build the city in which God and humanity dwell together”?

Leo writes, “Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era…. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world.”

Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity) makes clear that we should reject the apple  – or the Apple – on the so-called tree of knowledge in favour of the Truth.

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This is the only way to ensure that “the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible.”

It’s not a call to return to the Dark Ages, but a prayer for our actual enlightenment.