He Pope Leo XIV This Monday he presented his first encyclicalthe Magnificent Humanitya text of 110 pages and five chapters that has surprised by its scope: more than a document on artificial intelligence —which was what many expected—, is a moral diagnosis of civilization in what he calls the fourth industrial revolution. León, after his first year of papacy, has also taken advantage of the document to shore up his geopolitical vision, especially in the final chapter, where he asks overcome the just war doctrine.
The encyclical, published coinciding with the 135th anniversary of the New things of Leo XIII, resumes its same structure: the new affairs (of the new world) that the world demands that the Church interpret. The Pope organizes his argument around two biblical images: the tower of Babel, symbol of hybris technology that reduces the human being to data, and the reconstruction of the walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah (Old Testament), symbol of shared responsibility from below.
One of his starkest diagnoses has to do with who controls technological power. Before they were the states; Today “the main drivers of development are private actors, often transnational, endowed with resources greater than those of many governments.” He technological power has thus acquired”a predominantly private faceand therefore even more difficult to govern and direct towards the common good.” This further grounds the demand of international regulation and governancehe reasons.
The red line
With this, the first Peruvian-American Pope resumes his criticism of “technocratic paradigm” which has already been formulated Francisco and claim a shared ethical code on AI anchored in criteria of social justice. “A more moral AI is useless if that morality is decided by a few”writes. AI systems, he warns, are not neutral: “they reflect and reinforce stereotypes or ideological positions of those who have designed and programmed them.” And he insists: “data ownership cannot be entrusted only to the private sector”; They must be managed as “common or collective assets.”
It is here that he adopts his most belligerent tone towards the technoelites who also promote new ideologies. Criticize the transhumanism and the posthumanism: “The human being does not flourish despite the limit, but often across the limit“, he states. “Posthumanism, especially in its most radical versions, criticizes anthropocentrism and proposes a form of hybridization between the human being, the machine and the environment. […] These hypotheses are gaining relevance.” But humanity “must not be replaced or surpassed”.
Digital slavery
However, AI already generates new forms of slavery: that of the “marked, mutilated, consumed bodies” of those who extract rare earth —adolescents and children in dangerous conditions—, and that of millions of invisible workers who label data and moderate content“mostly women, who work hard in exchange for minimum salaries“.” “It is not enough to invoke efficiency or praise the benefits of innovation, if these are based on a chain of exploitation that is deliberately kept hidden,” he points out. Criminal networks also use digital platforms to recruit and control victims of trafficking.
Colonialism today shows this “unpublished face“, which no longer dominates only bodies, but “appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information.” Health flows, genetic maps and demographic profiles are “the new rare earths of power”. These can be used to train predictive models, guide investment strategies, anticipate crises and, above all, select who and what matters,” says the Pope. If this situation is not reversed, “the digital age will not be postcolonial, but colonial in another form“. In this context, the Pope asks for forgiveness in the name of the Church for its historical complicity with slavery: “In the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for forgiveness”he writes, to reinforce the urgency of combating its current forms.
“The digital revolution is modifying the grammar of conflicts“, and to this is added “a worrying loss of historical memory” that facilitates the distorted rewriting of the past. For León, there is no technological solution to this. “There is no algorithm that can make war morally acceptable.” AI can only make it “faster and more impersonal, with victims reduced to data“. Defends the multilateralism and the UN, but claims “deep reforms” in the face of its current weakness. And in a passage with unequivocal resonance with sectors close to Trump or Putin, he warns: “Whoever uses the name of God to legitimize terrorism, violence or war, betrays his face”.
Classical doctrine and abuses
In a nod to the most conservative sectors, the Pope also reiterates that abortion and euthanasia are “seriously unlawful decisions” and, also speaking to those outside the Church, asks that the ecclesiastical hierarchy purify its structures of “opacity and prevarications“, in reference to abuses by the clergy. It is important, remember, to listen to the victims as “an integral part of a path of justicewhich includes recognition of harm, fair reparation and prevention”.
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