Let’s do a little memory.
The 15th century was ending and The Christian Church found the printing press wonderful.almost providential. The adoption of that invention by ecclesiastical institutions was enthusiastic because it allowed them to amplify their mission.
It didn’t take long for the discourse to change noticeably. in the bull Inter multiplies In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII praised it but warned of its risks: the same thing that served to spread the word of God, could serve to spread heresies and false ideas. It was then that censorship was introduced according to which no book should be printed without the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities. That laid the foundations for the future Index librorum prohibitorum which established a list of prohibited works for all of Christendom.
That didn’t go too well. Martin Luther precisely took advantage of that divine invention to distribute your propaganda during the Protestant Reformation, and if this movement ended up being successful it was undoubtedly thanks to the printing press. It is not in vain that Luther is considered the first author of best-sellers of history.
The encyclicals in the face of technological advances
Let’s move forward.
In 1891 Pope Leo XIII published his encyclical Rerum Novarumpossibly the most famous social encyclical in history. In it the pontiff focused on the rights of workers as response to the disturbing Industrial Revolution. He denounced the concentration of wealth and new technologies “in the hands of a few,” and warned that this was turning workers into slaves.
Let’s keep moving forward.
90 years ago, Pius XI launched his act Vigilanti Cura (1936), dedicated exclusively to cinema. It recognized the technological progress that cinematography represented, but warned that if it was not strictly regulated, it would become the greatest instrument of moral corruption and mass manipulation in history.
That message would be accompanied by the encyclical Miranda Prorsus (1957), by Pius XII, which extended that warning to both radio and televisionwhich had as much or more capacity than cinema to be beneficial but also toxic to humanity.
There have been other social encyclicals related to technology: Pacem in Terris (1963) by John XXIII spoke of the atomic danger, while Evangelium Vitae (1995) by John Paul II was a wake-up call against eugenic biomedical techniques and embryo manipulation.
The curious thing is that most of these encyclicals were published many years after certain technological advances had occurred. That would make one think that there are one or several encyclicals dedicated to the internet, mobile phones or social networks. There are not, although these topics have been mentioned by the last Popes in other messages.
Arrives Magnificent Humanitas
Therefore it is surprising that Pope Leo XIV has dedicated an entire encyclical to artificial intelligence. He has done it just three years after ChatGPT was launched, and he has also done it with a unique title: Magnificent Humanitas (2026). A fact: Robert Fracis Prevost, Pope Leo XIV, graduated in mathematics in 1977 from Villanova University in Philadelphia.
This encyclical follows a very clear historical line of argument: on many occasions in which a disruptive technology appears, the Vatican adopts the role of “ethical brake” and tries to warn of something relevant: technical and technological advances must be subordinated to human beings.
In Magnificent Humanitas the discourse is known and reasonable: warning that large AI companies They will end up imposing their moral vision on the entire planet. It is not just that hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) or companies like OpenAI or Anthropic dominate this market in the commercial section: it is that this dominance also translates into a form of influence that is even more worrying than cinema or television were (and are).
The encyclical also warns of how AI is causing a “cognitive displacement” in which human beings end up preferring that algorithms think for them instead of making a reflective effort. The text is very long (40,000 words, which is approximately equivalent to a novel of about 150 pages) and ambitious, and covers many more areas, but the univocal message is that of a warning about the dangers of this technology.
If one looks at this entire catalog of papal warnings from a historical perspective, it is impossible not to see the paradox. Most of the technologies that the Vatican once denounced as existential threats ended up, in the end, making the world a better, more prosperous and more connected place. The printing press democratized culture, the Industrial Revolution raised the global standard of living, cinema and television enriched the collective imagination, and biotechnology saves lives.
History shows us that these bad omens of the Popes never came to pass completely, but we must be careful. The value of these encyclicals is not in their ability to predict the future, but in their function as ethical counterweights. It’s okay and necessary that someone warns about the risks, because those dangers were and still are real.
Image | The Holy See
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