Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, is primarily concerned with a set of hypermodern issues: artificial intelligence, concentrated private power and the transhumanist goal of developing technology to enhance – or deform – human nature.
Released on the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, the document presents a civilisational choice: whether to build a new Tower of Babel through technological self-deification, or to pursue the patient, participatory work of Nehemiah in rebuilding a city orientated towards God and the common good, where divine grace and human nature coexist, with technology subordinated to the end of human flourishing.
