Recently, Pope Leo XIV issued his first Papal Encyclical Letter, titled Magnifica Humanitas “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” The document places AI within the long tradition of Catholic social teaching and asks how humanity should respond to the “new things” of the digital age. I wanted to review it from a compliance angle.
Pope Leo framed AI not as a narrow technology issue, but as a profound question about human dignity, work, truth, freedom, power, data, social justice, and the common good. It opens with two biblical images, the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Nehemiah, to present the central choice of the AI age: will we construct systems of domination, or will we build communities of shared responsibility?
