More than any other global institution, the Roman Catholic Church, through the Pope, has provided its perspectives on issues and situations that confront all human beings in light of gospel truth. These are often done through papal encyclicals.

When Pope Leo the 13th first wrote the groundbreaking encyclical Rerum Novarum ( of new things) in the late 1800s, it was a response to the Industrial Revolution, an epoch in world economic history that saw fundamental change: more people working in factories to produce manufactured goods rather than on farms. We all know how this altered the nature of work and how it bred new ways of looking at production, the economy, and the world. This was also a time that revealed the reality of the exploitation of fellow human beings in the name of building industry and wealth, as well as the rise of political ideologies such as socialism.

Rerum Novarum and other social encyclicals that followed it helped us understand that this change should not diminish the humanity of people and brought forth the principles of the common good and subsidiarity, which are among the key stances of Catholic social teaching, juxtaposed against extremes of individualistic greed through extreme capitalism and socialism.

Against this backdrop, the latest encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity, is an encyclical divided into five chapters (you may read it in the official Vatican website). It focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) as the “res novae” or new thing of the current generation, whilst encouraging more thoughtful and just use of the phenomenon. The encyclical asks us all to uphold and affirm humanity in a manner that is based on Catholic Social teaching.

While it does not deny the benefits of technology and considers it a “force not antagonistic to humanity”, it asks us to ponder how the technology may prove to be detrimental to humanity if it uses AI to build towers of Babel and monuments to pride rather than relying on Divine guidance and wisdom to face challenges. Pope Leo XIV seeks ways to ensure that technology serves people and the common good, not merely the benefit of some at the expense of others.

In my layperson’s view, Magnificat Humanitas and other encyclicals must not be read in isolation. Rather, it must be read as part of a long series of documents and teachings that illuminate a view on society grounded on divinely inspired moral principles and the deep reservoir of social teaching, rather than simply reading it as a political statement or sociological treatise that seeks short-term gains and interests of those watching it, or to solve global problems alone. Often, we are tempted to view such documents through secular eyes that pit the Church against the world and parse its perspectives and activities to check whether it is adapting to worldly modernity or the current zeitgeist. Instead, it has a divine mission that it must uphold through history.

My first of two simple takeaways is that no matter how groundbreaking it is as a technology, AI must remain a tool for our use and under our reason and control. It must never replace us. AI is, therefore, a machine that cannot build a human society by itself. It must therefore be used responsibly by humans if we are to maximize its benefits for us to shape history and society profoundly, under God's loving guidance, while upholding the common good.