Opinion

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON: Pope Leo sees the AI age clearly — and warns we must save our souls

Pope Leo's encyclical draws on Augustine, Tolkien, and Catholic social teaching to address AI, war, and human dignity

By Bishop Robert Barron Fox News

Published May 31, 2026 8:00am EDT

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Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae covers a variety of themes, both theological and anthropological, and has proved to be remarkably prophetic, and yet it is still, in the minds of most people, simply the "birth control" encyclical. Similarly, Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ ranges across a number of topics and provides a trenchant analysis of the philosophy that dominates the modern world, and yet, for most, it is simply the "global warming" encyclical. I am a bit afraid that something similar might happen to Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas, for it is already being characterized as the "AI encyclical." But to reduce this extraordinary text to that single theme would be regrettable indeed. Leo does, of course, discuss AI, and with remarkable insight, but there is so much more going on in this letter, and it should not be overlooked.

The best framework for understanding the text is the title. Pope Paul VI famously said that the Church is an expert in humanity, and the Vatican II document Gaudium et spes commences with the reminder that the Church is concerned with all dimensions of human experience. One of the last texts composed by Pope Francis, Dignitas infinita, focused on the "infinite dignity" of the human being. The irreducible nobility of the human being is, I believe, the master motif of Magnifica Humanitas. In line with his recent predecessors, Pope Leo insists that we human beings are magnificent because we have been made in the image and likeness of God and even more wonderfully elevated through the Incarnation to a share in divinity itself. It is not the secular humanism that the pope presents, but a deeply theological and Christological humanism.

Magnifica Humanitas effectively commences with a contrast between two images drawn from the Old Testament, namely, the construction of the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the return of the exiles from Babylon. The first, driven by imperialistic hubris and undertaken without reference to God, led to calamity; the second, supervised by Nehemiah, predicated upon the cooperation of the various elements within Israelite society and undertaken for the glory of God, led to something beautiful. Pope Leo worries that many of the "new things" of today, including and especially AI and other forms of advanced technology, can have a Tower of Babel quality, that is to say, a tendency toward manipulation, domination, and the reduction of all forms of communication to a singular digital language. But he firmly believes that, rightly employed, these marvels can fit into a more "Nehemiah" framework and become a means of enhancing human dignity and community.

Pope Leo warns artificial intelligence could become a force for "domination, exclusion and death" without moral limits in the Vatican’s new encyclical. (Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP via........

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