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GREAT HUMANITY. NOT A METAPHYSICS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: LEO XIV AND THE CUSTODY OF MAN

The problem is not how powerful Artificial Intelligence becomes, but which man uses it. Because no technique perfects what does not exist and for this reason, what is missing in man, it cannot be delegated to the machine to be created […] Civilizations begin to decline when they stop distinguishing between what can be built and what must be preserved. And of all the things man can lose, the most difficult to reconstruct is always the same: freedom.

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Read the first encyclical of a Pontiff a year after the beginning of his pontificate it is always a delicate exercise, if the topic then touches on one of the most complex and controversial elements of our time: Artificial Intelligence.

The risk is twofold: on the one hand, demanding from the text what it does not want to be, on the other hand, attribute to him what he doesn't say. This methodological clarification is necessary from the beginning, Why Magnificent Humanity it was not born as a technological manifesto nor as a philosophical treatise on the nature of Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps it is precisely from here that a first impression of disorientation arises in the theologian accustomed to the great speculative encyclicals of the twentieth century.. Indeed, who expected a document built on the model of The human race, Of Development of Peoples, Of Centennial year o di Faith and Reason he might be surprised. The rest, in the magisterium of the Roman Pontiffs at least two great varieties of documents can be distinguished: texts that speak above all to the present, to the ecclesial community, to society, to politics and the urgencies of their time; texts that inevitably become dated over the years and whose main value no longer consists in offering direct answers to the problems of the present, but in allowing certain passages to be understood, crises and evolutions in the life of the Church. An example among many could be You will be surprised, given by Gregory XVI in 1832, whose sociopolitical conceptions cannot be extrapolated from that precise historical context and transposed into contemporary society. Then there are documents that, even though they were also born within a specific historical season, they mainly address issues that touch on the permanent foundations of faith and Christian anthropology and therefore continue to speak beyond their own time; think about it, with different characteristics, at the The splendor of truth of John Paul II or to Spe salvi by Benedict XVI. It is naturally still early to establish which of the two genres it belongs to Magnificent Humanity, but a first impression is that Leo XIV chose to speak to the historical present, offering orientation criteria for a transformation already underway, rather than elaborating a synthesis intended to constitute a long-term theological reference.

Leo XIV does not address the problem wondering if machines can really think, nor does it enter into the distinction between intelligence, consciousness and computation. This is perhaps a structural limit? More than a limit it seems to be the choice of a different path, outlined from the first pages: read technological transformation as a question that concerns first and foremost the vocation of man, his way of inhabiting the world and ordering his own action. From this perspective, the center of the encyclical does not appear to be Artificial Intelligence as an autonomous object of analysis, but the human subject who develops and uses it. This orientation emerges with particular clarity in chapter VI (cf.. NN. 95-99), where the August Author recalls the risk that technical efficiency is taken as the prevailing criterion for the organization of human action and insists on the fact that progress is inseparable from the formation of conscience, by personal responsibility and man's ability to direct means towards authentically human ends. Hence the insistence of the document not so much on the limits of the machine, as well as on the quality of the person who uses it. This choice also emerges in the symbolic structure of the text. In fact, the encyclical opens its reasoning through two biblical images that the Holy Father uses as a key to understanding the entire document (cf.. chapter I, NN. 8-12). The first is the story of Babel (cf.. Gen 11,1-9): men decide to build a city and a tower "whose top reaches the sky" to affirm their self-sufficiency and "make a name for themselves"; the result is not greater unity, but the confusion of languages ​​and dispersion. The second image is that of the reconstruction of Jerusalem led by Nehemiah (cf.. Born 2-6): a destroyed city is rebuilt not to exalt someone's power, but through an orderly work, shared and oriented towards the possibility for a people to return to live and live. Through these two images the document does not contrast the technical with the non-technical, but two spiritually opposite forms of building: on the one hand the work that arises from man's self-sufficiency, from the claim to dominate the sky and from the uniformity that sacrifices the person to efficiency; on the other, patient reconstruction, shared and ordered to God, in which the common good does not arise from the power but from the responsibility of a people who mend the bonds even before the walls.

However, one question remains open which will inevitably accompany the reading of the entire text: the custody of the person and the reminder of responsibility will be sufficient to address a phenomenon that does not only concern the use of new tools, but the progressive transfer to technical apparatuses of acts that belong to knowing, to judging and deliberating proper to the person?

I. CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY: THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE TECHNIQUE, BUT THE POINT FROM WHICH YOU LOOK AT IT

One of the first questions that the reader inevitably asks himself when faced with this encyclical is whether we find ourselves in continuity with the great magisterium of the twentieth century or before a document that, despite placing themselves in the same ecclesial groove, it belongs to a different level of theological construction, cultural and qualitative. The answer cannot be univocal: in terms of its fundamental contents, the text clearly fits into the continuity of the Social Doctrine of the Church. However, this does not oblige us to maintain that we are faced with a document of the same speculative depth, of the same processing capacity or the same qualitative level that characterized some great encyclicals of the last century. Recognizing this difference does not mean formulating a negative judgment on the magisterium of Leo, own sensitivity and priorities - but take note that not all magisterial documents are constructed with the same degree of speculative elaboration nor do they possess the same ability to generate theological categories destined to have a stable impact on the cultural and historical level.

Already in the introduction Leo XIV recalls the task entrusted to each generation of giving shape to its own time while safeguarding the dignity of the person, promoting justice and making brotherhood possible, reiterating that the permanent risk is that of building an inhuman world precisely at the moment in which man's ability to transform reality increases. The continuity with the previous social teaching is evident, however the observation point chosen by the text appears different. Pius XII developed his teaching through a strong work of conceptual clarification: distinguished the levels of discourse, it delimited categories and tended to build argumentative architectures in which each concept occupied a specific place. An approach supported mainly by constant comparison with the great theological tradition of the Church - from the Fathers to the Doctors - and by the classical metaphysical framework, especially in its scholastic elaboration, assumed as an instrument to safeguard the order between nature and grace, reason and faith, history and truth. Paul VI tended to read the great historical processes - economic development, social transformations, relations between peoples, modernization — trying to understand its consequences on man, on his dignity, on his freedom and on the forms of human coexistence. More than delimiting concepts, he was trying to build a vision capable of holding history together, society, personal development and vocation. John Paul II addressed the issues of his time by constantly bringing them back to the question of man. Its broad categories — person, truth, freedom, work, body, consciousness — were not presented as isolated themes, but as elements of a unitary vision in which man is understood as a moral subject called to truth and responsibility. For this reason its documents are not normally limited to indicating practical guidelines, but they tend to construct a true interpretation of man and history. Leo. A choice that emerges clearly above all in the way in which the document defines the task of discernment: not understanding how far the technique can go, but to establish towards which ends it should be oriented. An important shift ensues: the problem is not placed primarily on the level of efficiency, but on the level of human judgment. The question that remains open is not whether machines can become more intelligent, but if the man, progressively delegating acts that belong to his personal experience, still maintains control over his actions or ends up adapting to the logic of the tools he has built. For this reason the encyclical insists less on the nature of the instrument and more on the responsibility of the person who uses it. This orientation emerges with particular clarity in chapter V (cf.. n. 87), where Leo XIV states that the decisive criterion does not consist in the development of technical capacity as such, but in the question about the subject that governs it and the end to which it is ordered. So that, the decisive question, that's not what machines can do, but what man chooses to become through what he himself builds. In this sense, the document recalls that technological development cannot be evaluated exclusively on the basis of efficiency or increase in operational capabilities, but it must be judged in light of the consequences it produces on the person and on social life. The text insists that no innovation can be considered beneficial simply because it is possible or effective, but must be subjected to discernment on the human good that it is called to serve (cf.. chapter III, NN. 60-64).

However, one question remains open which will inevitably accompany the subsequent debate: whether the call to safeguard the human is sufficient or whether it becomes necessary to also question the way in which technologies modify the concrete exercise of judgment, of freedom and conscience. Therefore, whether this encyclical will have the merit of seriously reopening this question, he will have already accomplished something important.

(II). ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: GUARDING MAN OR UNDERSTANDING WHAT HE IS BECOMING?

It is probably on this point that one of the most characteristic nuclei of the encyclical is concentrated. Leo XIV does not address Artificial Intelligence starting from the question of the nature of intelligence or the possibility that artificial processes reproduce human thought. In chapter III (cf.. NN. 52-58) the document refers rather to risk than technique, as an ordered instrument for human action, progressively tends to transform into an environment capable of influencing perception, relationships and forms of experience. Subsequently, in chapter IV (cf.. NN. 71-76), addressing the issue of delegation of decision-making functions, the encyclical insists on the fact that no technical apparatus can replace personal responsibility and moral judgment. From here emerges the central point of the text: the decisive question is not what the machine can become, but what man risks to stop exercising. For this reason the document does not focus its interest on the technical description of Artificial Intelligence systems, but he repeatedly returns to the question of the human subject who designs and uses them. This orientation emerges in chapter II (cf.. NN. 28-32), where the Supreme Pontiff recalls the criterion of the dignity of the person as a measure of progress; in chapter IV (cf.. NN. 79-82), where he insists on the responsibility that accompanies every technological decision; and in chapter VI (cf.. NN. 112-116), where the common good is indicated as a criterion for judging the effects of digital transformations on social life. From this perspective, the problem is not placed primarily on the level of machine performance, but on the relationship between technical development and human responsibility.

The implicit question of the encyclical therefore seems to be: how to avoid man being reduced to a function of the system he himself has built? It is a serious and necessary question. However, right here a possible limit also emerges, or maybe, more correctly, a deliberate choice. Because the text does not seem to want to fully address an issue that today appears increasingly decisive: not just what man should guard, but what man is becoming.

The revolution of Artificial Intelligence in fact, it does not only concern new tools. It touches how we perceive time, we exercise judgment, we build relationships, we understand the body, we live freedom and form conscience. From this point of view, the problem is not simply preventing the machine from replacing man; the problem is understanding whether man, progressively entrusting increasingly larger parts of one's experience to external devices, you risk changing the very way of being a man. The encyclical approaches this question in chapter VI (cf.. NN. 103-108), when it recalls the danger of a progressive reduction of human experience to what can be measured, technically processed and administered, insisting on the fact that the person never coincides with the sum of his functions nor with the processes he is able to delegate. However, the document does not continue this line of reflection to the point of a systematic anthropological elaboration and does not enter extensively into the question of how technologies affect the structure of the cognitive act., of judgment and deliberation. His main interest remains moral and social. For this reason, the most fruitful contribution that the text can offer to the ecclesial debate does not consist so much in having said the last word on Artificial Intelligence, as in having remembered which one should remain the first: the human person. In this sense, the reference contained in chapter VII acquires particular importance (cf.. n. 124), where Leo XIV states that authentic progress does not coincide with the increase in operational capacity, but with the growth of man in responsibility and communion, remembering that no technical advancement can replace the individual's own value.

III. A FIRST CONCLUSION: BETWEEN THE CUSTODY OF MAN AND FREEDOM DENIED

It would be ungenerous to read this encyclical asking it for what it did not intend to offer. Magnificent Humanity choose another path: don't start from the question of what technique is, but by the question of which man is formed by the use of technology. We are faced with a text that chooses a different path: call the Church and the world to safeguard man in the time of digital transformation. A further question remains open - and perhaps will have to be addressed in the coming years: whether protecting man only means protecting his dignity or also understanding more deeply what is happening to his intelligence, to his freedom and his experience of reality. If this encyclical will have the merit of seriously reopening this question, he will have already accomplished something important.

Reading this encyclical I couldn't avoid a comparison with some reflections that I developed in my recent book Freedom denied (Editions The island of Patmos, January 2026), dedicated to the relationship between freedom, ethics, Artificial Intelligence and Christian anthropology. It is not a question of superimposing a personal work on the magisterium of the Roman Pontiff - but by nature, purpose and authority belongs to a completely different order - but to put two different points of observation into dialogue when faced with the same question. The encyclical chooses to address the topic starting from the Social Doctrine of the Church. This orientation emerges in particular in chapter II (cf.. NN. 28-32), where Leo. In my book I instead chose a different starting point: question the relationship between technique and the human act of knowing, judge and decide, developing this reflection in the light of the classical theological tradition and in particular the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The decisive point was not whether the machine can become more efficient than man, but to ask ourselves whether there are acts specific to the person that cannot be delegated without altering the human itself. From this perspective I have taken up one of the central intuitions of the Thomistic synthesis: moral discernment arises from the unity between ratio e understanding, between the ability to analyze and that of grasping truth in its unity. Judgment does not coincide with calculation. And it is precisely here that the Thomistic principle takes on a decisive meaning. In my book I took up the famous axiom: «Grace does not destroy nature, but finish (Grace does not destroy nature, but he perfects it, QUESTION, I, I, 8 ad 2)». This principle does not state that grace replaces what man lacks; states the opposite: it brings a real nature to fruition, without eliminating or replacing it. Applied analogically to the relationship between man and Artificial Intelligence, the principle leads to a radical question: if grace perfects nature but does not replace it, can technique perfect faculties that man does not possess? The answer I have tried to develop is negative: Artificial Intelligence can amplify existing capabilities, speed up processes, support complex operations; but it cannot generate what is missing: it does not produce consciousness where there is no consciousness, it does not generate judgment where there is no moral formation, it does not create discernment where interiority is lacking.

The problem is not how powerful Artificial Intelligence becomes, but which man uses it. Because no technique perfects what does not exist and for this reason, what is missing in man, it cannot be delegated to the machine to be created. In the book I dedicated to this topic I explain that no civilization has ever collapsed because it had too powerful tools. Civilizations begin to decline when they stop distinguishing between what can be built and what must be preserved. And of all the things man can lose, the most difficult to reconstruct is always the same: freedom.

Rome, 25 May 2026

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GREAT HUMANITY. NOT A METAPHYSICS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: LEO XIV AND THE CUSTODY OF MAN

The problem is not how powerful Artificial Intelligence may become, but what kind of man makes use of it. Because no technique perfects what does not exist and therefore, what is lacking in man cannot be delegated to the machine in order to be created […] Civilizations begin to decline when they cease to distinguish between what can be constructed and what instead must be safeguarded. And among all the things that man may lose, the most difficult to rebuild remains always the same: freedom.

— Contemporary ecclesial affairs—

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Reading the first encyclical of a Pontiff one year after the beginning of his pontificate is always a delicate exercise, especially when the subject addressed belongs to one of the most complex and controversial territories of our time: Artificial Intelligence. The risk is twofold: on the one hand demanding from the text what it does not intend to be, on the other attributing to it what it does not say. This methodological clarification is necessary from the outset, because Magnificent Humanity was not conceived as a technological manifesto nor as a philosophical treatise on the nature of Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps it is precisely here that a first impression of disorientation arises in the theologian accustomed to the great speculative encyclicals of the twentieth century. Indeed, anyone expecting a document modelled on The human race, Development of Peoples, Centennial year or Faith and Reason may therefore be surprised. Moreover, within the magisterium of the Roman Pontiffs one may distinguish at least two major types of documents: texts that speak above all to the present, to the ecclesial community, to society, to politics and to the urgencies of their own time; texts which, with the passing of years, inevitably remain bound to their historical season and whose principal value no longer consists in offering direct responses to present problems but in allowing certain passages, crises and developments in the life of the Church to be understood. One example among many may be You will be surprised, issued by Gregory XVI in 1832, whose socio-political assumptions cannot be extracted from that specific historical context and mechanically transferred to contemporary society. There are then documents which, although likewise born within a precise historical season, address primarily questions touching the enduring foundations of faith and Christian anthropology and therefore continue to speak beyond their own time; one may think, with different characteristics, of The splendor of truth by John Paul II or Spe salvi by Benedict XVI.

It is naturally still too early to establish to which of these two genres Magnificent Humanity belongs, but a first impression is that Leo XIV has chosen to speak to the historical present, offering criteria of orientation before a transformation already underway rather than elaborating a synthesis intended to constitute a long-term theological reference. Leo XIV does not approach the problem by asking whether machines can truly think, nor does he enter into the distinction between intelligence, consciousness and computation. Is this perhaps a structural limitation?

Rather than a limitation, it appears to be the choice of a different path, outlined from the very first pages: to read technological transformation as a question concerning above all the vocation of man, his way of inhabiting the world and of ordering his own action. In this perspective, the centre of the encyclical does not appear to be Artificial Intelligence as an autonomous object of analysis, but the human subject who develops and uses it. This orientation emerges with particular clarity in Chapter VI (cf. NN. 95-99), where the Holy Father recalls the risk that technical efficiency may be assumed as the prevailing criterion for organising human action and insists that progress is inseparable from the formation of conscience, personal responsibility and man’s capacity to order means toward genuinely human ends. From this derives the document’s emphasis not so much on the limitation of the machine as on the quality of the subject who employs it. This choice also emerges in the symbolic architecture of the text. The encyclical opens its argument through two biblical images that the Holy Father uses as interpretative keys for the entire document (cf. Chapter I, NN. 8-12). The first is the account of Babel (cf. Gen 11:1-9): men decide to build a city and a tower “with its top in the sky” in order to affirm their own self-sufficiency and “make a name” for themselves; the result is not greater unity but confusion of languages and dispersion. The second image is the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Nehemiah (cf. Neh 2-6): a destroyed city is rebuilt not to exalt anyone’s power but through an ordered, shared work directed towards enabling a people once more to inhabit and live. Through these two images, the document does not oppose technology and non-technology, but two spiritually opposed forms of building: on the one hand, a work born of human self-sufficiency, of the claim to master heaven and of a uniformity that sacrifices the person to efficiency; on the other, a patient reconstruction, shared and ordered toward God, in which the common good does not arise from power but from the responsibility of a people that restores relationships before rebuilding walls.

Yet a question remains open and will inevitably accompany the reading of the entire text: whether safeguarding the person and recalling responsibility are sufficient to address a phenomenon that concerns not merely the use of new instruments but the progressive transfer to technical apparatuses of acts belonging properly to the person’s knowing, judging and deliberating.

I. CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY: THE PROBLEM IS NOT TECHNOLOGY, BUT THE POINT FROM WHICH IT IS VIEWED

One of the first questions that the reader inevitably raises before this encyclical is whether we are dealing with continuity with the great magisterium of the twentieth century or with a document which, while remaining within the same ecclesial current, belongs to a different level of theological, cultural and intellectual development. The answer cannot be univocal: from the standpoint of fundamental contents, the text clearly stands in continuity with the Church’s social doctrine. Yet this does not oblige one to maintain that we are dealing with a document of the same speculative depth, the same capacity for elaboration or the same qualitative level that characterised some of the great encyclicals of the previous century. To recognise this difference does not mean to formulate a negative judgement on the magisterium of Leo XIV — each age develops its own languages, sensibilities and priorities — but to acknowledge that not all magisterial documents are constructed with the same degree of speculative elaboration, nor do they possess the same capacity to generate theological categories destined to exercise a lasting influence on the cultural and historical plane.

Already in the introduction Leo XIV recalls the task entrusted to every generation: to shape its own time while safeguarding the dignity of the person, promoting justice and making fraternity possible, reaffirming that the permanent risk is that of building an inhuman world precisely at the moment when man’s capacity to transform reality increases. Continuity with previous social magisterium is evident; nevertheless, the point of observation chosen by the text appears different. Pius XII developed his magisterium through a strong work of conceptual clarification: he distinguished levels of discourse, delimited categories and tended to construct argumentative architectures in which every concept occupied a precise place. An approach sustained principally by constant engagement with the great theological tradition of the Church — from the Fathers to the Doctors — and by the classical metaphysical framework, especially in its scholastic elaboration, assumed as an instrument to safeguard the order between nature and grace, reason and faith, history and truth. Paul VI tended to read the great historical processes — economic development, social transformations, relations among peoples, modernisation — seeking to understand their consequences for man, for his dignity, for his freedom and for the forms of human coexistence. More than delimiting concepts, he sought to construct a vision capable of holding together history, society, development and the vocation of the person. John Paul II addressed the questions of his time by constantly bringing them back to the question of man. His great categories — person, truth, freedom, work, body, conscience — were not presented as isolated themes but as elements of a unified vision in which man is understood as a moral subject called to truth and responsibility. For this reason, his documents normally do not limit themselves to indicating practical orientations but tend to construct a true interpretation of man and history. Leo XIV, by contrast, does not enter into the problem of Artificial Intelligence by asking whether computational processes can truly be considered forms of intelligence or whether calculation may replace the human act of knowing. A choice that emerges clearly above all in the way the document defines the task of discernment: not to understand how far technology may go, but to establish towards which ends it ought to be directed. From this derives an important shift: the problem is not placed first of all on the level of efficiency but on the level of human judgement. The question that remains open, therefore, is not whether machines may become more intelligent, but whether man, progressively delegating acts that belong to his personal experience, still maintains mastery over his own action or instead ends up adapting himself to the logic of the instruments he has built. For this reason the encyclical insists less upon the nature of the instrument and more upon the responsibility of the subject who uses it. This orientation emerges with particular clarity in Chapter V (cf. n. 87), where Leo XIV states that the decisive criterion does not consist in the development of technical capacity as such, but in the question concerning the subject who governs it and the end towards which it is ordered. Thus, the decisive question is not what machines are able to do, but what man chooses to become through what he builds. In this sense the document recalls that technological development cannot be evaluated exclusively on the basis of efficiency or increased operational capacities, but must be judged in light of the consequences it produces for the person and for social life. The text insists, in fact, that no innovation may be considered beneficial simply because it is possible or effective, but must be subjected to discernment regarding the human good it is called to serve (cf. Chapter III, NN. 60-64).

A question nevertheless remains open and will inevitably accompany subsequent debate: whether the appeal to safeguarding the human is sufficient or whether it becomes necessary to ask also how technologies modify the concrete exercise of judgement, freedom and conscience. Therefore, if this encyclical succeeds in seriously reopening this question, it will already have accomplished something important.

(II). ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: SAFEGUARDING MAN OR UNDERSTANDING WHAT HE IS BECOMING?

It is probably at this point that one of the most distinctive elements of the encyclical is concentrated. Leo XIV does not approach Artificial Intelligence beginning from the question concerning the nature of intelligence or the possibility that artificial processes may reproduce human thought. In Chapter III (cf. NN. 52-58), the document instead recalls the risk that technology, from being an instrument ordered to human action, may progressively become an environment capable of influencing perception, relationships and forms of experience.

Subsequently, in Chapter IV (cf. NN. 71-76), addressing the theme of delegating decision-making functions, the encyclical insists that no technical system can replace personal responsibility and moral judgement and moral judgement. From this emerges the central point of the text: the decisive issue is not what the machine may become, but what man risks ceasing to exercise. For this reason the document does not concentrate its interest on the technical description of Artificial Intelligence systems, but repeatedly returns to the question of the human subject who designs and employs them.

This orientation emerges in Chapter II (cf. NN. 28-32), where the Supreme Pontiff recalls the criterion of the dignity of the person as the measure of progress; in Chapter IV (cf. NN. 79-82), where he insists upon the responsibility that accompanies every technological decision; and in Chapter VI (cf. NN. 112-116), where the common good is presented as the criterion for evaluating the effects of digital transformations upon social life. In this perspective, the problem is not placed primarily on the level of the machine’s performance, but on the relationship between technical development and human responsibility. The implicit question of the encyclical therefore seems to be: how can man be prevented from being reduced to a function of the system that he himself has constructed? It is a serious and necessary question. Yet precisely here there also emerges a possible limitation — or perhaps, more correctly, a deliberate choice. For the text does not seem willing to confront fully a question that today appears increasingly decisive: not only what man must safeguard, but what man is becoming.

The revolution of Artificial Intelligence concerns not merely new instruments. It touches the way in which we perceive time, exercise judgement, form relationships, understand the body, live freedom and form conscience. From this point of view, the problem is not simply preventing the machine from replacing man; the problem is understanding whether man, progressively entrusting to external apparatuses increasingly extensive parts of his experience, risks modifying the very way of being human. The encyclical approaches this question in Chapter VI (cf. NN. 103-108), when it recalls the danger of a progressive reduction of human experience to what can be measured, processed and technically administered, insisting that the person never coincides with the sum of his functions nor with the processes he is capable of delegating. Yet the document does not pursue this line of reflection towards a systematic anthropological elaboration and does not enter extensively into the question of how technologies affect the structure of the cognitive act, of judgement and of deliberation. Its principal interest remains moral and social. For this reason, the most fruitful contribution that the text may offer to ecclesial debate consists not so much in having spoken the final word on Artificial Intelligence, as in having reminded us of what must remain the first: the human person.

In this sense, particular significance is acquired by the reminder contained in Chapter VII (cf. n. 124), where Leo XIV affirms that authentic progress does not coincide with the increase of operational capacity, but with the growth of man in responsibility and communion, recalling that no technological advancement can substitute the proper value of the person.

III. A FIRST CONCLUSION: BETWEEN THE CUSTODY OF MAN AND DENIED FREEDOM

It would be unfair to read this encyclical by asking from it what it did not intend to offer. We are not, in fact, before a document constructed like some of the great encyclicals of twentieth-century social magisterium, nor before a text whose task is the theoretical analysis of Artificial Intelligence in its conceptual structures, in the relationship between technology and human act, or in the consequences that automation may produce for the understanding of intelligence and freedom. Magnificent Humanity chooses another path: not to begin from the question of what technology is, but from the question of what kind of man is formed through the use of technology. We are before a text that chooses a different way: to recall the Church and the world to the safeguarding of man in the age of digital transformation. There remains open — and perhaps it will need to be addressed in the years to come — a further question: whether safeguarding man means only protecting his dignity, or also understanding more deeply what is happening to his intelligence, his freedom and his experience of reality.

If this encyclical succeeds in seriously reopening this question, it will already have accomplished something important. Reading this encyclical, I could not avoid comparing it with certain reflections I developed in my recent book “Freedom denied” (“Denied Freedom”, Editions The island of Patmos, January 2026), dedicated to the relationship between freedom, ethics, Artificial Intelligence and Christian anthropology. This is not a matter of superimposing a personal work upon the magisterium of the Roman Pontiff — which by nature, purpose and authority belongs to an entirely different order — but of placing two different points of observation into dialogue before the same question. The encyclical chooses to address the theme beginning from the Church’s social doctrine. This orientation emerges particularly in Chapter II (cf. NN. 28-32), where Leo XIV recalls that technical progress cannot be assumed as a self-sufficient criterion of development and insists that every innovation must be evaluated in the light of the good of the person and of the quality of the human relationships it contributes to generate. In my book, by contrast, I chose a different point of departure: to question the relationship between technology and the human act of knowing, judging and deciding, developing this reflection in light of the classical theological tradition and, in particular, the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The decisive point was not to establish whether the machine may become more efficient than man, but to ask whether there exist acts proper to the person that cannot be delegated without altering the human itself. Within this perspective, I resumed one of the central intuitions of Thomistic synthesis: moral discernment arises from the unity between ratio and understanding, between the capacity to analyse and the capacity to grasp truth in its unity. Judgement does not coincide with calculation. And it is precisely here that the Thomistic principle acquires decisive significance. In my book I returned to the celebrated axiom: «Grace does not destroy nature, but finish (“Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it”, QUESTION, I, I, 8 ad 2)». This principle does not affirm that grace replaces what is lacking in man; it affirms the opposite: it brings a real nature to fulfilment without eliminating or replacing it. Applied analogically to the relationship between man and Artificial Intelligence, the principle leads to a radical question: if grace perfects nature but does not replace it, can technology perfect faculties that man does not possess? The answer I attempted to develop is negative: Artificial Intelligence may amplify existing capacities, accelerate processes and support complex operations; but it cannot generate what is absent: it does not produce consciousness where there is no consciousness, it does not generate judgement where moral formation does not exist, it does not create discernment where interiority is lacking.

The problem is not how powerful Artificial Intelligence becomes, but what kind of man makes use of it. Because no technique perfects what does not exist and therefore what is lacking in man cannot be delegated to the machine in order that it may be created. In the book I dedicated to this theme, I explain that no civilisation has ever collapsed because it possessed instruments that were too powerful. Civilisations begin to decline when they cease to distinguish between what can be built and what instead must be safeguarded. And among all the things that man may lose, the most difficult to rebuild has always remained the same: freedom.

Rome, 25 May 2026

.

NOT A METAPHYSICS OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: LEO XIV AND THE CUSTODY OF MAN

The problem is not how powerful Artificial Intelligence becomes., but on what type of man to use it. Because no technologywas going perfects what does not exist and, therefore, what is missing in man cannot be delegated to the machine to be created […] Civilizations begin to decline when they stop distinguishing between what can be built and what, on the contrary, must be guarded. And among all the things that man can lose, the most difficult to recover always remains the same: freedom.

- Ecclesial news -

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Read the first encyclical of a Pontiff one year after the beginning of his pontificate, it is always a delicate exercise, especially when the topic addressed belongs to one of the most complex and controversial territories of our time.: Artificial Intelligence. The risk is twofold: on the one hand, demand from the text what it is not intended to be; on the other, attribute to him what he does not say. This methodological precision is necessary from the beginning, why Magnificent Humanity It is not born as a technological manifesto nor as a philosophical treatise on the nature of Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps it is precisely here that a first impression of confusion is born in the theologian accustomed to the great speculative encyclicals of the 20th century.. Indeed, who expected a document built according to the model of The human race, Development of Peoples, Centennial year O Faith and Reason you might be surprised. Otherwise, Within the magisterium of the Roman Pontiffs, at least two major types of documents can be distinguished.: texts that speak mainly to the present, to the ecclesial community, to society, to politics and the urgencies of his own time; texts that, over the years, They inevitably become dated and whose main value ceases to consist of offering direct answers to the problems of the present and becomes a way that allows us to understand certain passages., crises and evolutions of the life of the Church. An example among many could be You will be surprised, promulgated by Gregory XVI in 1832, whose sociopolitical conceptions cannot be extrapolated from that determined historical context nor mechanically transferred to contemporary society.. Then there are, the documents that, although they were born within a certain historical period, They mainly address questions that touch on the permanent foundations of faith and Christian anthropology and, therefore, They continue to speak beyond their own time; just think, with different features: The splendor of truth of John Paul II or Spe salvi of Benedict XVI. It is still too early to establish which of these two genres it belongs to. Magnificent Humanity, but a first impression is that Leo XIV has chosen to speak to the historical present, offering guiding criteria in the face of a transformation already in progress rather than developing a synthesis intended to become a long-range theological reference.

Leo XIV does not face the problem wondering whether machines can really think nor does it fall into the distinction between intelligence, consciousness and computation. Is this a structural limit?? More than a limit, It seems to be about choosing a different path, outlined from the first pages: read technological transformation as a question that concerns above all the vocation of man, to their way of inhabiting the world and ordering their own action. From this perspective, The center of the encyclical does not seem to be Artificial Intelligence as an autonomous object of analysis, but the human subject that develops and uses it. This orientation emerges with particular clarity in chapter VI (cf. NN. 95-99), where the Augusto Author remembers the risk of technical efficiency being assumed as the predominant criterion for the organization of human work and insists that progress is inseparable from the formation of consciousness, of personal responsibility and man's ability to direct means towards authentically human ends. From this derives the document's insistence not so much on the limit of the machine, how much about the quality of the subject who uses it. This choice also appears in the symbolic structure of the text. The encyclical effectively opens its reasoning through two biblical images that the Holy Father uses as a key to reading the entire document. (cf. chapter I, NN. 8–12).

The first is the story of Babel (cf. GN 11,1-9): men decide to build a city and a tower "whose top reaches to the sky" to assert their self-sufficiency and "make a name for themselves"; the result is not greater unity, but the confusion of languages ​​and the dispersion. The second image is the reconstruction of Jerusalem guided by Nehemiah (cf. Born 2-6): a destroyed city is rebuilt not to exalt someone's power, but through an ordered work, shared and aimed at allowing a people to return to inhabit and live. Through these two images the document does not contrast technical and non-technical, but two opposite ways of building: in the first case, the work tends to replace the good of man; in the second, remains subordinated to the good of the human community.

However, a question remains open that will inevitably accompany the reading of the entire text: If the custody of the person and the call to responsibility are enough to confront a phenomenon that does not only refer to the use of new instruments, but to the progressive transfer to technical devices of acts that belong to knowledge, the judgment and deliberation of the person.

I. CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY: THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE TECHNIQUE, BUT THE POINT FROM WHICH IT IS LOOKED AT

One of the first questions that the reader inevitably asks himself when faced with this encyclical is whether we find ourselves in continuity with the great teaching of the 20th century or before a document that, even situated within the same ecclesial channel, belongs to a different level of theological construction, cultural and qualitative. The answer cannot be univocal: under the profile of the fundamental contents, The text is clearly situated in continuity with the Social Doctrine of the Church. However, This does not imply affirming that we are faced with a document of the same speculative thickness., of the same capacity for elaboration or the same qualitative level that characterized some of the great encyclicals of the last century. Recognizing this difference does not mean formulating a negative judgment about the teaching of Leo XIV — each era develops languages., own sensitivities and priorities - but to recognize that not all magisterial documents are constructed with the same degree of speculative elaboration nor do they have the same capacity to generate theological categories intended to have a stable impact on the cultural and historical level..

Already in the introduction Leo XIV remembers the task entrusted to each generation of shaping its own time while safeguarding the dignity of the person, promoting justice and making fraternity possible; reiterating that the permanent risk is that of building an inhuman world precisely at the moment when the human capacity to transform reality is increasing. The continuity with the teachings of the social teaching is evident; but the point of observation chosen by the text seems different. Pius XII developed his teaching through a strong work of conceptual clarification: distinguished the levels of discourse, It delimited the categories and tended to build argumentative architectures in which each concept occupied a precise place.. An approach sustained mainly in constant confrontation with the great theological tradition of the Church - from the Fathers to the Doctors - and by the classical metaphysical approach, especially in its scholastic elaboration, assumed as an instrument to guard the order between nature and grace, reason and faith, history and truth. Paul VI tended to read the great historical processes - economic development, social transformations, relations between people, modernization — trying to understand its consequences on man, about your dignity, about their freedom and about the forms of human coexistence. More than defining concepts, sought to build a vision capable of keeping history together, sociedad, development and vocation of the person. John Paul II faced the questions of his time by constantly returning them to the question about man. Its major categories — person, TRUE, freedom, job, body, consciousness — were not presented as isolated themes, but as elements of a unitary vision in which man is understood as a moral subject called to truth and responsibility.. That is why their documents are usually not limited to indicating practical guidelines, but rather they tend to construct a true interpretation of man and history. XIV lion, instead, does not address the problem of Artificial Intelligence by asking whether the computational process can be assimilated to intelligence or whether calculation can replace the human act of knowing.. This choice emerges clearly above all in the way the document defines the task of discernment.: not understanding how far technology can go, but to establish the purposes within which it must be oriented. This results in an important change.: The problem is not primarily at the level of efficiency, but in that of human judgment. The question that remains open is not whether machines can become smarter., but if the man, progressively delegating acts that belong to your personal experience, does he still retain control of his own work or ends up adapting to the logic of the instruments he has built. For this reason the encyclical insists less on the nature of the instrument and more on the responsibility of the subject who uses it.. This orientation emerges with particular clarity in chapter V (cf. n. 87), where Leo XIV states that the decisive criterion does not consist of the development of technical capacity as such, but in the question about the subject that governs it and the end to which it is ordered. Therefore, the decisive question is not what machines can do, but what men choose to become through that which builds. In this sense, the document recalls that technological development cannot be evaluated exclusively on the basis of efficiency or the increase in operational capabilities., but must be judged in light of the consequences it produces on the person and on social life.. The text insists, indeed, in that no innovation can be considered beneficial simply because it is possible or effective, but must be subjected to discernment about the human good that it is called to serve. (cf. chapter III, NN. 60-64).

Remains, however, open a question that will inevitably accompany the subsequent debate: if the call to the custody of what is human is sufficient or if it is also, It is necessary to question the way in which technologies modify the specific exercise of judgment, of freedom and conscience. So, whether this encyclical has the merit of seriously reopening this question, will have already done something important.

(II). ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: CUSTODY THE MAN OR UNDERSTAND WHAT HE IS BECOME?

It is probably at this point where one of the most characteristic nuclei of the encyclical is concentrated.. Leo XIV does not address Artificial Intelligence from the question about the nature of intelligence or about the possibility of artificial processes reproducing human thought.. In chapter III (cf. NN. 52-58) The document rather reminds us of the risk that technology, of an instrument ordered to human action, progressively tends to transform into an environment capable of influencing perception, relationships and forms of experience. Later, in chapter IV (cf. NN. 71-76), facing the issue of delegation of decision-making functions, The encyclical insists that no technical device can replace personal responsibility or moral judgment. From here emerges the central point of the text: the decisive question is not what the machine can become, but what man runs the risk of ceasing to exercise. For this reason, the document does not concentrate its interest on the technical description of Artificial Intelligence systems., but repeatedly returns to the question of the human subject who projects and uses them. This orientation emerges in chapter II (cf. NN. 28-32), where the Supreme Pontiff recalls the criterion of the dignity of the person as a measure of progress; in chapter IV (cf. NN. 79-82), where he insists on the responsibility that accompanies every technological decision; and in chapter VI (cf. NN. 112-116), where the common good is indicated as a criterion to judge the effects of digital transformations on social life. In this perspective, the problem is not posed primarily at the level of the machine's performance, but in the relationship between technical development and human responsibility.

The implicit question of the encyclical seems to be: How can man be prevented from being reduced to the system that he himself has built?? It is a serious and necessary question. However, precisely here emerges a possible limit - or perhaps, more correctly, a deliberate choice. Because the text does not seem to want to fully address an issue that today appears increasingly decisive.: not only what is it that man must guard, but what man is becoming.

The Artificial Intelligence revolution It is not limited only to new instruments. Affects the way we perceive time, we exercise judgment, we build relationships, we understand the body, we live freedom and form conscience. From this perspective, The problem is not simply to prevent the machine from replacing man; but in understanding if man, by progressively entrusting increasingly larger parts of their experience to external devices, runs the risk of modifying the very essence of the human being.

The encyclical approaches this question in chapter VI (cf. NN. 103-108), when he remembers the danger of a progressive reduction of human experience to that which can be measured, technically prepared and managed, insisting that the person never coincides with the sum of his functions or with the processes he is capable of delegating. However, The document does not continue this line of reflection to a systematic anthropological elaboration and does not go into the question of how technologies affect the structure of the cognitive act., of judgment and deliberation. His main interest remains moral and social.. For this reason, The most fruitful contribution that the text can offer to the ecclesial debate does not consist so much in having pronounced the last word on Artificial Intelligence., as in having remembered what must remain in the first place: the human person. In this sense, the so-called content in chapter VII takes on particular importance. (cf. n. 124), where Leo XIV affirms that authentic progress does not coincide with the increase in operational capacity, but with the growth of man in responsibility and communion, remembering that no technical advance can replace the personal value of the person.

III. A FIRST CONCLUSION: BETWEEN THE CUSTODY OF MAN AND THE DENIED FREEDOM

It would be unfair to read this encyclical demanding from him what he did not intend to offer.. Magnificent Humanity choose another path: not starting from the question about what the technique is, but from the question about what man is formed by the use of technology. We are faced with a text that chooses a different path: call the Church and the world to guard man in the time of digital transformation. A further question remains open – and perhaps will have to be addressed in the coming years.: If guarding man means only protecting his dignity or also understanding more deeply what is happening to his intelligence, with its freedom and with its experience of reality. If this encyclical has the merit of seriously reopening this question, will have already done something important.

Reading this encyclical I have not been able to avoid a dialogue with some reflections that I have developed in my recent book Freedom denied (Freedom denied, Editions The island of Patmos, January 2026), dedicated to the relationship between freedom, ethics, Artificial Intelligence and Christian Anthropology. It is not a matter of superimposing a personal work on the teaching of the Roman Pontiff - who by nature, purpose and authority belongs to a completely different order - but to establish a dialogue between two different points of observation regarding the same question. The encyclical chooses to address the issue starting from the Social Doctrine of the Church. This orientation emerges particularly in chapter II (cf. NN. 28-32), where Leo. In my book I chose, instead, a different starting point: interrogate the relationship between technology and the human act of knowing, judge and decide, developing this reflection in the light of the classical theological tradition and particularly the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The decisive point was not to establish whether the machine can become more efficient than man, but to ask if there are acts specific to the person that cannot be delegated without altering the human being.. From this perspective I returned to one of the central intuitions of the Thomist synthesis: Moral discernment is born from the unity between ratio e understanding, between the ability to analyze and the ability to grasp the true in its unity. The judgment does not coincide with the calculation. And it is precisely here where the Thomistic principle acquires a decisive meaning.. In my book I took up the famous axiom: «Grace does not destroy nature, but finish (Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it, QUESTION, I, I, 8 ad 2)». This principle does not affirm that grace replaces what man lacks.; claims exactly the opposite: complete a real nature, without removing or replacing it. Applied analogically to the relationship between man and Artificial Intelligence, the beginning leads to a radical question: If grace perfects nature, but it does not replace it, Can technology perfect faculties that man does not possess?? The answer I have tried to develop is negative.: Artificial Intelligence can amplify existing capabilities, speed up processes, sustain complex operations; but it cannot generate what is missing: does not produce consciousness where there is no consciousness, does not generate judgment where there is no moral formation, does not create discernment where interiority is lacking.

The problem is not how powerful Artificial Intelligence becomes., but on what type of man to use it. Because no technology perfects what does not exist and, therefore, what is missing in man cannot be delegated to the machine to be created. In the book that I have dedicated to this topic I explain that no civilization has ever collapsed because it had too powerful instruments.. Civilizations begin to decline when they stop distinguishing between what can be built and what, on the contrary, must be guarded. And among all the things that man can lose, the most difficult to recover always remains the same: freedom.

Rome, 25 May 2026

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