By Dr Christopher Evan Longhurst KSO
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity),
published this month, warns that AI risks concentrating power, narrowing human
freedom, and placing too much authority in the hands of unaccountable systems. Yet
the document raises an uncomfortable question closer to home: when the Vatican
critiques concentrated moral authority, is it also critiquing itself?
Magnifica Humanitas is an ambitious and rhetorically compelling intervention into the
ethical challenges posed by AI. Yet beneath its appeal to human dignity lies a deeper
claim: that the Catholic Church continues to claim a privileged role in interpreting
what authentic human flourishing requires in the age of AI.
The encyclical repeatedly approaches AI with suspicion. Technology appears
primarily as a threat to embodiment, relationality, labour and moral agency, while
comparatively little attention is given to its capacity to reduce suffering, increase
accessibility, or empower marginalised communities.
The result is a theology of caution that risks sanctifying human limitation rather than
interrogating the possibilities for its alleviation. For many people living with disability,
chronic illness, or severe deprivation, technological intervention represents liberation
rather than moral compromise. Yet Magnifica Humanitas often treats vulnerability
and finitude as conditions to be preserved rather than overcome.
At its centre lies an explicitly Catholic understanding of personhood grounded in an
expansive theological reading of imago Dei, alongside notions of dependence and
transcendence. The difficulty is not that the Pope argues from Christian convictions;
a papal encyclical inevitably will. The deeper issue is that Magnifica Humanitas often
moves from confessional anthropology to universal ethical prescription with little
acknowledgement of the epistemic leap involved.
Terms such as “human dignity”, “authentic flourishing”, and “the common good” are
rightly invoked as universal moral aspirations. The more difficult question concerns
who possesses the authority to define their meaning in conditions of deep
philosophical, religious, and cultural pluralism. In Magnifica Humanitas, dialogue is
encouraged, yet its moral architecture often appears substantially predetermined.
The tension is striking: a document advocating shared discernment while preserving
papal authority as a privileged interpreter of what constitutes authentic human
flourishing.
This contradiction becomes sharper when Pope Leo criticises concentrated
technological power and unaccountable systems of authority. The Vatican itself
remains among the world’s most highly centralised moral institutions, reserving ultimate doctrinal
interpretation to an exclusive, male hierarchical elite. The question therefore
emerges: Does the Church condemn in AI the very concentrations of authority and
interpretive control it continues to exercise within its own structures?
The tension is more than rhetorical. Magnifica Humanitas calls for transparency,
participation and accountability, while the Catholic Church continues to face criticism
regarding institutional opacity, governance failures and resistance to external
scrutiny. Appeals to safeguarding vulnerable persons also occur against the
backdrop of decades of criticism over clerical abuse and protection of institutional
reputation. Such histories do not invalidate the Pope’s ethical concerns about AI.
They do, however, require the Vatican’s claims to moral authority to be received with
greater scrutiny.
Ultimately, Magnifica Humanitas reveals a deeper paradox within contemporary
Catholic engagement with modernity. The Pope warns against concentrated
authority while continuing to exercise it; critiques opaque systems while remaining
selective about institutional transparency; and calls for humility before technological
power while displaying considerable confidence in ecclesial authority itself.
The encyclical’s most important challenge may ultimately turn back upon the Church
itself. If AI demands accountability, participation and humility, the Vatican cannot
remain merely the teacher of those principles. It must also become subject to them.
Christopher Longhurst is a New Zealand-based lay Catholic theologian.
