Moved by magnificent humanity’s refreshing hope

Magnifica Humanitas is difficult reading. The encyclical doesn’t use complex language. It is readable as it presents profound concepts and historical summaries (especially of the Church’s Social Doctrine unfolding since Rerum Novarum). It’s difficulty is its cautions about the harms humans can wreak through things they manufacture, including artificial intelligence. We’ve all experienced the ways humans mess up. 

Equally emphatically, the encyclical notes that our human inventions and innovations can be of great service to the world’s needs.  It’s not a case of “no technology” or “yes technology,” writes Leo XIV, but of choosing how we will build: self-destructively like those who built the Tower of Babel, or to the glory of God and in service of His people like Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.

The document begins and ends with magnifica humanitas — “magnificent humanity” — not “magnificent artificial intelligence,” or even “magnificent intelligence.” Who are we humans? How can we read the signs of our times unless we’re aware of our true identity? It’s not artificial intelligence, or any other human invention, that must decide how to exercise its God-bestowed free will. It’s “magnificent humanity” that has before it a real choice, like the Israelites to whom God says, when finally in sight of their Promised Land: “I have placed before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So, choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

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One of our strongest temptations is subtly picked up in the text: to give up on ourselves. We do give up on one another, on the big scale (countries, regions, organizations) and the small (family members, church members, neighbours). We abandon the weak and fragile, run away from those who suffer the poverties of old age and infirmity, and discard our little ones, all while projecting an attitude of shamelessness and even pride in our capacity for callous selfishness. Having abandoned each other, we pursue death, fostering the illusion that we can take control over death and therefore over life. We invent artificial intelligence and call it to the rescue.

Are we magnificent humanity, or poor lost humanity?

Unfortunately for our temptations, but fortunately for us, God has made it so He cannot abandon us, even if we beg Him to: “Leave me, Lord, I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). But He cannot, because He is who He is. He has wedded us to Himself. He has taken on humanity forever, renewed His Covenant with us through the Incarnation, and gone with us to the farthest-flung reaches of our own violence and despair, not for vengeance but for our healing and wholeness.

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“Through the Lord’s closeness, the gift of peace enters into the world in a paradoxical way” (Magnifica Humanitas #231). 

What is this way? It’s “the power to become children of God … awakened when we allow ourselves to be moved by the tears of the little ones, the fragility of the elderly, the silence of victims and the struggle of those who fight against the evil they do not wish to commit.”

It’s hard for us to accept the radicality of this simple “way.” Deep down we know we’re messy and lost; how could we be worthy to become His children? God doesn’t forsake us and cannot abandon us. Instead, He has given us a built-in capacity to love as He does. In His will is our peace.

An elderly priest recently gave me witness that this “way” is alive and well. Fr. Bosco ministers on the peripheries in a de-Christianized society, as he has for 50 years. He loves to be with his people, to hear them speak and see their gifts at work. His excitement about the new encyclical overflows into an anguish to share it with his people. Full of hope, he’s planning ways to stir up their interest so they can study it because he wants to hear what moves them, and how they will live it together.

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The other, Fr. Marius, acknowledged that the world’s cruelty makes us ask: “How can we say that God is love and life is beautiful?” He saw the proof in young people still falling in love, the children still coming to the banquet, eating and drinking at the Lord’s table. 

The love these priests show their parishioners helps give flesh to the Lord’s closeness to us. They show how the old generation with the new keeps being a refreshing hopeful presence, revealing how magnificent humanity is alive and flourishing in our Church.

(Marrocco can be reached at [email protected].)

A version of this article appeared in the October 25, 2026 issue of The Catholic Register with the headline "Moved by magnificent humanity’s refreshing hope".