BREAKING: Leo XIV’s new encyclical makes Christ equivalent to mere human beings

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BREAKING: Leo XIV’s new encyclical makes Christ equivalent to mere human beings
A first look at Pope Leo's first encyclical 'Magnifica Humanitas.'



Pope Leo XIV
Adri Salido/Getty Images

May 25, 2026
VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — While Pope Leo’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, tackles transhumanism and new technologies, it also departs from theological Tradition on issues such as human dignity and the doctrine of just war.

On May 25, Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”) at 11 AM Italian time.  In the lengthy document, the Pope argues that humanity today finds itself at a crossroads. We have a choice between building a new “Tower of Babel,” marked by self-sufficiency and the idolatry of profit, and rebuilding “Jerusalem,” a project of co-responsibility and communion under the gaze of God. However, the document presents problematic doctrinal elements, particularly the reaffirmation of the doctrine of infinite human dignity by Francis.

Despite its attention to Christ, the encyclical is clearly oriented toward man and his dignity. In fact, by reaffirming Francis’ error of the infinite dignity of man, Leo XIV makes Christ and the human being — regardless of religion and state of grace — equivalent. In other words, Christ becomes the symbol of humanity:

For this reason, as a believer among believers, I invite everyone to contemplate, in the face of the Son of God, the grandeur of humanity that shines a light also on the era of AI. […] This human face is the fullness toward which history is moving. It is the mystery of “recapitulation”: the certainty that the Father has decreed to bring all things, those in heaven and those on earth, back to Christ, the one Head (cf. Eph 1:10). In this plan, nothing will be lost that is authentically human. Indeed, everything will be purified and reunited in the One, who gathers every fragment of life, every tear and every authentically human achievement, rescuing them from nothingness and delivering them, redeemed, to the Father.

The document explores the problem of artificial intelligence, but also addresses a wide range of anthropological, social, and political problems. The Pope identifies AI as an “accelerator” that places traditional social categories in crisis.

Magnifica Humanitas begins with a series of general principles from the Social Doctrine of the Church. Among these, in addition to the infinite dignity of man, are the notions of the common good and the universal destination of goods.

The first principle is the “State’s responsibility to ensure cohesion” among individuals and to “harmonize the different sectoral interests with the requirements of justice” so that society may have a “shared vision.”

The second is a guarantee to everyone of the use of natural resources and the products derived from them and also — in one of the document’s most innovative theses — “immaterial and cultural goods” such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructures, and data. In other words, the encyclical suggests that all this should be state property, or at least strongly regulated by states. It should not be individual property; Magnifica Humanitas assumes that public ownership of material goods guarantees a broader diffusion of the knowledge necessary for present-day development.

“In a context where the wealth of nations depends increasingly on knowledge and technology, when these goods remain concentrated in the hands of a few, without adequate forms of sharing and access, a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods,” the encyclical reads.

Starting from these premises, which in any case depart from their classical theological definitions, three principal theses may be identified within the document.

The first is that technology is not neutral: “Technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, are not neutral, for they can either foster participation and justice or exacerbate inequality, control and exclusion,” Pope Leo writes.

The second is that humanity finds itself at a crossroads: “On the one hand, there is the Tower of Babel, where collective effort follows a plan that dominates and ultimately dehumanizes. On the other hand, there are the ruins of Jerusalem, which under Nehemiah’s direction are rebuilt piece by piece as a project of shared responsibility.”

The third is that Christ should be understood as the model of humanity to be followed in controlling and correcting emerging technologies, and the cultural movements that take their bearings from them, such as transhumanism and posthumanism.

An entire chapter of the encyclical — the fifth — is dedicated to the “culture of power” and the war-related implications of emerging technologies, including AI. In it, Pope Leo XIV addresses the subject of war with a position of clear rupture from historical developments of doctrine, going so far as to state explicitly that the theory of “just war” is now “outdated.”The Pope observes that “without prejudice to the right to self defense in the strictest sense,” just war theory has been “far too often invoked to justify any war whatsoever.” He emphasizes that humanity today possesses much more effective and humane instruments to promote life and resolve conflicts, identifying such instruments in dialogue, diplomacy, and forgiveness. Leo XIV also denounces how the development of weapons systems based on artificial intelligence in fact makes war more “practicable” and less subject to human control.

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