The Document I Didn’t Expect to Read in Full

I never imagined I’d stay up until midnight reading a papal encyclical. But on the night of May 25, 2026, that’s exactly what happened.

Magnifica Humanitas — 42,300 words, 5 chapters, the first papal document entirely focused on the impact of Artificial Intelligence on society — is not what I expected from a Vatican letter. It’s lucid. It’s specific. It’s devastatingly well-informed. And it treats AI with a seriousness many technical reports fail to achieve.

Simon Willison, one of the most respected developers in the AI ecosystem, wrote: “It’s some of the clearest writing I’ve seen on the ethics of integrating AI into modern society.” When a senior developer and the Pope agree on something, it’s worth paying attention.

Pope Leo XIV signed the document on May 15, 2026 — the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, the encyclical that in 1891 defined the Church’s position on workers’ rights in the industrial era. The date choice isn’t accidental: Leo XIV is positioning AI as the industrial revolution of our time.

What the Document Actually Says

Magnifica Humanitas’ fundamental premise is nuanced in a way that surprised me: technology is not “a force antagonistic to humanity”, nor is it “inherently evil.” But — and here’s the point — “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.”

The encyclical doesn’t attack AI. It attacks how AI is being built, by whom, and to serve whose interests. The opening sentence captures it:

“Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”

Five themes dominate the document. Here are the ones that impacted me most.

The Illusion of Synthetic Empathy

The pontiff’s first strike goes directly at voice assistants and virtual companions spreading worldwide. The encyclical warns that AI is incapable of feeling and that the market is selling “forged empathy.”

The real danger begins when human beings replace genuine emotional connections with interactions with algorithms programmed to please and simulate affection. For the Church, this commercialized emotional dependency dehumanizes society.

This made me think of the Magic Effect post: people with lower AI literacy are the most receptive — and the most vulnerable to this simulated empathy. They think AI “understands” because they don’t know it’s statistics. The Pope, without using technical jargon, is describing exactly the same phenomenon.

The encyclical has special concern for children and young people. In a world where teenagers already form emotional bonds with chatbots (the tragic Character.AI case in the US isn’t directly mentioned, but the reference is clear), the Church calls for specific protections.

The New Tower of Babel: Power Concentration

The political and economic argument is where Magnifica Humanitas gains geopolitical weight. The biblical metaphor is powerful:

“Humanity has become so ambitious in building something massive, centralized, and unified that it risks losing itself in the process, collapsing under the weight of its own pride.”

The document points out that a handful of private transnational companies now control more data, infrastructure, and computational power than the vast majority of sovereign governments. This asymmetry puts the sovereignty of peoples and the common good at risk.

When I read this and think of Anthropic with $30 billion in revenue, NVIDIA controlling 80% of training chips, OpenAI seeking an IPO — the Tower of Babel metaphor doesn’t seem like exaggeration. It seems like diagnosis.

Religion News Service summarized it well: the Pope calls to “disarm” AI — remove it from economic, military, and personal interests that distort its development. Not destroy it. Disarm it.

The Hidden Human Cost: The “New Slavery”

Perhaps the heaviest criticism. Leo XIV denounced the invisible backstage of “clean technology”:

Exploitation in the Global South. Millions of people in developing countries, especially in Africa, working for pennies to label data, train models, and moderate violent content. TIME’s investigation into OpenAI’s Kenyan workers earning less than $2/hour to review traumatic content in 2023 is the canonical example.

Rare earth mining. Children and teenagers in dangerous conditions mining cobalt, lithium, and rare earths essential for the GPUs running language models. The Congo produces over 70% of the world’s cobalt — frequently with documented child labor.

The pontiff classified this structure as “a new form of slavery, disguised by modern corporate branding.” That’s a phrase that will echo for years.

The Presentation Moment

A detail that impressed me: at the official encyclical presentation at the Vatican on May 25, the speaker was Christopher Olah, Anthropic co-founder. According to Religion News Service, Olah warned that AI development “is not necessarily geared toward making humanity better.”

When the co-founder of one of the world’s largest AI companies goes to the Vatican and publicly agrees with the encyclical’s premise — that technology isn’t neutral and can be directed against the common good — that’s not just symbolic. It’s a signal.

Vatican News reported that the encyclical positions itself in the lineage of the Church’s Social Doctrine: from Rerum Novarum (1891, workers’ rights), through Centesimus Annus (1991, post-Cold War economy) to Laudato Si’ (2015, environment). A Vatican source familiar with the drafting told NCR: “Just like Laudato Si’ was not a climate change encyclical, this will not be an AI encyclical — even if its central case study is AI.”

What I Really Think

After reading the entire document and researching reactions, here’s where I landed:

The moral clarity is genuinely valuable. In a debate dominated by benchmarks, valuations, and hype, having a voice that asks “but is this good for people?” is refreshing. The encyclical isn’t anti-technology — it’s pro-humanity. And that distinction matters.

The labor critiques are irrefutable. The AI supply chain depends on exploited labor in the Global South. This is documented. Denying it is unsustainable. And the fact that the Pope names it with the moral authority he carries amplifies the pressure.

The power concentration is real. Three or four companies control the infrastructure redefining how humanity works, thinks, and communicates. That’s a fact. The question isn’t whether it’s true, but whether it’s acceptable.

The encyclical’s limits are predictable. The Vatican doesn’t propose concrete technical solutions. It can’t. It’s a moral document, not an engineering whitepaper. And some critiques (synthetic empathy, digital loneliness) are easier to identify than to solve.

The CEOs’ silence is telling. When the world’s greatest spiritual leader publicly questions your business model — and the response is silence — that says more than any Twitter thread could.

Conclusion: AI in the Dock

Magnifica Humanitas removes AI from the pedestal of inevitable innovation and places it in the dock of moral responsibility. It reminds us that technology built on human exploitation and promoting social isolation cannot be called progress.

In 2026, the central question isn’t what AI can build. It’s what it’s silently destroying in our social fabric — and whether we’re willing to confront it.

I’m not religious. But I recognize moral clarity when I see it. And this encyclical has more clarity about AI risks than any Wall Street report I’ve read this year.

Share if this expanded your perspective:

42,300 words. 135 years after Rerum Novarum. And the same question: who does the technological revolution serve?

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