Pope Leo XIV did something no pontiff before him has ever done: he devoted his first encyclical entirely to artificial intelligence. Released on May 25 — deliberately signed on the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum — Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”) may prove the most consequential Christian statement yet on the technological revolution reshaping civilization.

The Anniversary and Its Argument

Leo XIII’s 1891 Rerum Novarum addressed the moral and economic upheaval of industrialization. This pope’s new document confronts a revolution driven not by steam engines but by algorithms, autonomous systems, and concentrated digital power. The encyclical declares plainly that “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.” When I read that sentence, I recognized an argument central to both “AI for Mankind’s Future” and “The New AI Cold War”: the values embedded in AI infrastructure belong to whoever built it. That is not a technical observation — it is a moral and geopolitical warning.

Why This Matters to Evangelicals

Evangelicals disagree with Rome on many theological questions, and those differences are real. But dismissing Magnifica Humanitas as a Catholic document would be a strategic mistake. Papal pronouncements on social questions shape policy discussions in Washington, Brussels, and at the United Nations. This one will apply pressure across Congress, the European Parliament, and technology companies on labor protections, children’s safety, autonomous weapons, transparency, and concentrated corporate power. Those debates are being joined now, and Christians who stay on the sidelines will find the terms already settled when they finally look up.

Human Dignity and the Image of God

The center of the encyclical is a vigorous defense of human dignity. Genesis 1:27 teaches that mankind alone bears the image of God — a truth with consequences for how we govern, work, and raise children. Pope Leo condemns transhumanism and posthumanism without qualification because both ideologies seek to dissolve the line between persons and machines.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s 2023 resolution on artificial intelligence declared that “human dignity must be central to any ethical principles, guidelines, or regulations for any and all uses of these powerful emerging technologies.” Pope Leo arrives at the same conclusion through a different theological tradition. That overlap is the mark of a truth that holds under pressure from multiple directions.

Concentrated Power and the Warfighting Domain

Pope Leo’s sharpest political warning concerns power concentrated beyond democratic accountability. He frames the challenge in unmistakably biblical terms, writing that humanity faces a choice: “either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.” That image cuts to the heart of what I trace in “The New AI Cold War”: AI systems deployed by authoritarian governments already function as instruments of control. Communist China uses AI-powered surveillance and behavioral scoring to monitor and suppress its population. Western platforms do something subtler but equally consequential — shaping what citizens see and believe through opaque algorithms that almost no one understands and virtually no one elected oversees.

The pope’s warning on autonomous weapons is equally direct. At the Vatican launch event, he stated that “very troubling voices have also reached me about increasingly autonomous weapons systems practically beyond any human reach to govern them effectively.” CNBC reported that warning verbatim. It matches the analysis in “The New AI Cold War”: AI compresses decision cycles and strips away the friction that once allowed commanders and statesmen to pause and choose restraint. Technology without moral wisdom removes the brake — a lesson history has recorded at catastrophic cost.

Children and the Renewal of the Mind

Pope Leo devotes sustained attention to the formation of children. Speaking to a stadium filled with teenagers before releasing the encyclical, he urged young people to use AI “in such a way that if it disappeared tomorrow, you would still know how to think, how to create, how to act on your own, how to form authentic friendships.”

Romans 12:2 commands believers not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed through the renewing of the mind. Proverbs 1:7 reminds us that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Deuteronomy 6:6-7 instructs parents to diligently teach their children truth and wisdom at every turn of daily life. Those responsibilities cannot be delegated to algorithmic systems designed by corporations whose interests do not include the formation of virtue.

A Moment That Demands Engagement

Magnifica Humanitas and the SBC’s 2023 resolution approach artificial intelligence from different theological traditions, but they converge on what matters most: AI is not morally neutral, human dignity is non-negotiable, and the family bears responsibilities that no algorithm can assume. The policy decisions taking shape now in Washington, Brussels, and Beijing — on regulation, autonomous weapons, data governance, and the AI arms race — will define the terms of human life for a generation. They will be made with or without a Christian voice in the room.

As I argue in “AI for Mankind’s Future,” the deepest contest in the AI age is whether the image of God in man will be honored or systematically eroded by the systems we build and the powers we grant them. American Christians need to decide whether they will engage that war alongside him — or discover later that the field was ceded while they waited.