Magnifica Humanitas: Five reflections on keeping the human person at the centre of AI
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how we work, communicate, learn and make decisions. As its capabilities grow, so too do the questions it raises.
How should we judge technological progress? What should remain distinctly human? How do we ensure efficiency does not become an end in itself? What kind of society are we using these technologies to build?
These questions sit at the heart of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On safeguarding the human person in the time of Artificial Intelligence.
Over five chapters, the encyclical considers AI and digital transformation through the lens of human dignity, Catholic Social Teaching and integral human development. Rather than treating AI simply as a technological issue, it places it within a much bigger conversation about what it means to be human.
The Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development has developed a five-part infographic series capturing some of the encyclical’s central themes. Below, we explore the five parts and some of the questions they raise for Catholic education.
1. What direction should we choose?
The first part begins with the extraordinary power humanity now possesses through artificial intelligence, digitalisation and other technological capabilities.
With that power come risks: concentrated control, automated decision-making and the possibility of diminishing human agency.
The encyclical contrasts two possible paths through the images of Babel and Jerusalem. Babel represents uniformity, dehumanisation and a world in which profit can take precedence over people. The alternative is built through dialogue, listening, inclusion, diversity and shared responsibility.
It is an important starting point because it shifts the conversation away from technological capability alone.
The question is not simply “What can AI do?”
It is “What direction should we choose as people and as a human community?”
For education, that distinction matters. Decisions about AI are also decisions about the kinds of classrooms, relationships, communities and ultimately people we want to form.
2. Putting human dignity at the centre
Chapter 2 grounds the discussion in the foundations and principles of Catholic Social Teaching.
The infographic highlights the innate and universal dignity of every human person alongside the common good, universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity and social justice.
Together, these provide a useful framework for thinking about technological change.
Rather than beginning with whether a technology is faster, cheaper or more capable, Catholic Social Teaching encourages us to ask whether it contributes to integral human development — the economic, social, spiritual and environmental development of the whole person and all people.
The infographic poses a particularly useful question:
“Do technological innovations truly help individuals and populations to become more humane and fraternal, while respecting our common home and future generations?”
For Catholic education, this provides a much richer measure of successful AI adoption than efficiency or productivity alone.
Does it strengthen relationships? Does it promote inclusion? Does it preserve human agency?
Does it contribute to learning and formation? Does it serve those who are most vulnerable?
3. AI is powerful. But it is not human.
Chapter 3 makes an increasingly important distinction between artificial intelligence and human intelligence.
AI can process enormous amounts of data. It can recognise patterns. It can generate content quickly and perform tasks that once appeared to require distinctly human intelligence.
But capability should not be confused with humanity.
As the infographic emphasises, AI has no consciousness. It does not love or suffer. It is not morally responsible for its actions. It can simulate aspects of intelligence and relationships without experiencing either.
This leads the encyclical to challenge what it describes as the technocratic paradigm — the risk that efficiency becomes the dominant criterion through which people, institutions and progress itself are judged.
For education, this is especially relevant.
AI promises to make many aspects of teaching and learning easier and faster. Some of those efficiencies may be enormously beneficial. But education has never simply been an exercise in maximising output.
Learning involves relationships, vulnerability, mistakes, perseverance, judgement, care and growth.
As the infographic puts it: “A limitation is not a flaw: it is what makes us human.”
The challenge is therefore not to reject efficiency, but to ensure efficiency remains subordinate to a more important purpose.
AI should help us become more human, not simply more efficient.
4. Truth, work and freedom in a digital world
The fourth chapter moves from principles to areas where technological transformation is already affecting everyday life: truth, work and freedom.
Digital technologies have dramatically changed how information is created and shared. The encyclical identifies risks including disinformation, manipulation and increased control, while emphasising critical education, transparency and responsible technology use.
Work presents another challenge. Technology can augment human capability and reduce unnecessary labour, but it can also create insecurity, inequality and environments in which people are expected to adapt themselves to machines.
Similarly, digital technology can expand human freedom while also influencing behaviour through data, algorithms and increasingly persuasive digital environments.
The distinction offered in the infographic is simple but powerful: If technology dominates, the human person becomes a means.
If technology is guided by wisdom, it becomes human development.
For Catholic schools and systems, these questions extend well beyond classroom AI use. They touch professional practice, staff wellbeing, data governance, digital wellbeing, procurement, privacy and the ways technology increasingly shapes organisational decision-making.
5. What are we ultimately building?
The final chapter broadens the lens again.
It considers technology alongside power, violence, peace and responsibility, before presenting a vision of a “civilization of love” grounded in justice, charity, fraternity and the universal common good.
Within that vision, technology has an important role — but a deliberately subordinate one.
Technology should serve the human person, foster real relationships and build community.
The encyclical also resists the idea that technological solutions alone will solve fundamentally human problems. Genuine transformation requires justice, solidarity, care for the vulnerable and what it describes as a “conversion of the heart”.
This brings the five-part series back to where it began.
The challenge posed by AI is not ultimately about choosing between technology and humanity.
It is about deciding what technology is for.
A conversation for Catholic education
Taken together, the five parts of Magnifica Humanitas offer neither a rejection of AI nor an uncritical embrace of technological progress.
They offer something more useful: criteria for discernment.
Human dignity. The common good. Solidarity. Subsidiarity. Truth. Responsibility. Relationship. Care. Justice. Freedom.
These principles can help Catholic education move beyond questions of whether particular AI tools should simply be allowed or prohibited and towards deeper questions about their purpose and impact.
How does this technology affect the formation of the student?
What human capabilities should it strengthen rather than replace?
Where can it genuinely free teachers to spend more time on relationships, judgement and learning?
Whose interests are represented in the systems we adopt?
How do we ensure that technological change benefits all students rather than widening existing inequalities?
And how do we preserve spaces for human encounter, reflection, difficulty, creativity and care in environments increasingly designed around speed and efficiency?
These questions do not have simple answers, and they cannot be resolved by individual educators or schools alone.
Perhaps one of the most important messages of the series is therefore found in its first and final chapters: build together.
Dialogue. Listen. Include. Share responsibility.
Or, in the language that concludes the series, become “builders of communion, rather than architects of Babel.”
As Catholic education continues to explore the opportunities and challenges presented by AI, that may be as valuable a starting point as any.
Explore the five-part series
Part 1 — Introduction and Chapter 1: Technology, human dignity and the choice between Babel and communion.
Part 2 — Chapter 2: Catholic Social Teaching and the principles that can guide technological progress.
Part 3 — Chapter 3: The promises of AI, the technocratic paradigm and what remains distinctly human.
Part 4 — Chapter 4: Safeguarding truth, work and freedom through technological transformation.
Part 5 — Chapter 5 & Conclusion: Technology, responsibility and building a civilisation of love.
Read Magnifica Humanitas in full →https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
