🔒 Magnifica Humanitas – Rerum Novarum 4.0?

Pope Leo XIV’s choice of topic might have surprised people who don’t follow the day-to-day life of the Catholic Church, but it really wasn’t—and for four reasons. First, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”) was deliberately signed on May 15, 2026—exactly the 135th anniversary of the promulgation of Rerum novarum, issued by Leo XIII so that, amid nineteenth-century capitalism and the growing popularity of socialism, the Church’s teaching (later called Catholic social doctrine by Pius XII) would show Catholics how, in tough market conditions, to protect both the ideal of freedom and, above all, human dignity. Second, the name chosen by Cardinal Prevost was a clear signal that he’s aware of the approaching anniversary and of the mission Catholic social doctrine has to play today—and that mission is precisely to find an answer to how a Catholic should respond to the rapid development of new technologies. For example, as early as last year, the American (though operating in Rome) conservative think tank Acton Institute organized a conference at the Church’s most important university, the Pontifical Gregorian University, titled “Artificial Intelligence, Human Dignity, and the Free Society”, which it promoted by noting that “in 1891 Pope Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum, responding to the ‘new things’ of his era and launching a corpus of modern Catholic social teaching. Pope Leo XIV’s choice of name and his early remarks signal that he thinks we are living in a similarly historic moment of social, cultural, and economic upheaval which will be driven by rapid advances in technology, including artificial intelligence..

Third, the Holy Father’s biography points to broad intellectual horizons—on the one hand, he’s a doctor of canon law, but he also has a background in mathematics. Fourth, papal teaching strives to account for the megatrends shaping socio-economic life—suffice it to recall Francis’s “ecological” encyclical “Laudato si’” (incidentally, quite criticized by some Catholic-conservative circles which, often like non-Catholic right-wing circles, exhibit a more or less pronounced skepticism about the need for an energy transition).