Updated: August 25, 2026
Magnifica Humanitas arrives more than 130 years after Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum in response to the massive economic and social upheaval created by the Industrial Revolution.
Now, Pope Leo XIV is addressing another revolution: artificial intelligence.
AI is already changing how we work, communicate, create, make decisions, and think about the future. And this time, the Church is entering the conversation while that transformation is still unfolding.
In this episode of The Catholic Money Show, Amanda and Jonathan introduce their new series on Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV’s letter on safeguarding the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. Over the coming episodes, they’ll work through the document chapter by chapter and look at what it means for technology, work, money, power, and the dignity of the human person.
From the Industrial Revolution to the AI Revolution
Last year, Amanda and Jonathan spent an entire series unpacking Rerum Novarum and its influence on Catholic social teaching.
That encyclical came during a period of enormous disruption. Industrialization was transforming labor, ownership, wages, cities, and the relationship between workers and those who controlled capital.
Today, many of those same kinds of questions are resurfacing in a new form.
AI is becoming more capable at an extraordinary pace. Tools that seemed impressive only a year or two ago are already being replaced by more powerful systems.
And unlike previous technological changes, AI raises questions that reach beyond what machines can produce.
What happens to work when machines can perform more human tasks?
What happens when efficiency becomes more valuable than the person being served?
Who controls the technology?
Who profits from it?
And what happens to the people who have the least power to shape where all of this is going?
Those are economic questions. They are also moral ones.
The Church Is Entering the Conversation Early
One thing Amanda particularly appreciates about Magnifica Humanitas is its timing.
The Church is not waiting decades to see how AI plays out before offering guidance. Pope Leo XIV is speaking while the technology is still developing and while many of its long-term consequences remain unclear.
That matters because, as the document observes, most people are not the ones determining the future of these technologies.
Many of us are simply watching.
Developers, corporations, investors, governments, and a relatively small number of powerful people are making choices that could affect how billions of people work and live.
Meanwhile, the rest of society is often left hoping it all turns out well.
Magnifica Humanitas asks Catholics to engage more intentionally.
Where are we actually going?
What kind of future are we trying to build?
And what should guide us as we make those choices?
The Tower of Babel or the Common Good?
One of the central images Amanda and Jonathan highlight from the introduction is the Tower of Babel.
Pope Leo XIV presents humanity with a choice: we can use our technological power to construct another Babel, or we can build a society in which technology serves human beings and the common good.
The danger of the “Babel” path is not simply that technology becomes impressive.
It is what happens when power, profit, uniformity, and efficiency become the standards by which everything else is judged.
The Pope warns against reducing the human person to data and performance.
That warning has obvious implications for AI.
A person cannot be fully described by productivity, output, purchasing behavior, algorithms, or economic value.
Human beings have dignity that comes before those measurements.
What Happens When Profit Becomes the Goal?
There is another line from the document that immediately caught Amanda and Jonathan’s attention: the warning against an “idolatry of profit” that sacrifices the weak.
That phrase belongs directly in a Catholic conversation about money.
New technologies can create tremendous wealth. They can increase productivity, reduce costs, automate repetitive tasks, and open possibilities that would have seemed impossible a generation ago.
Those benefits are real.
But the financial upside cannot become the only measure of whether a technological development is good.
If an innovation produces enormous profit while leaving workers, families, or vulnerable communities to absorb the consequences, Catholics have to ask harder questions.
Who benefits?
Who carries the cost?
Are human beings being served by the technology, or are people being reorganized around what makes the technology most profitable?
Those questions will become increasingly important as AI changes the workplace and broader economy.
What Happens to Work?
Amanda points to comments from technology leaders predicting a future in which people may eventually need to work very little—or perhaps not at all.
That may sound appealing at first.
But Catholic teaching gives work a deeper meaning than simply earning enough money to survive.
Human beings were given work before the Fall.
Work gives us opportunities to create, contribute, develop our gifts, provide for others, participate in society, and cooperate with God’s creative action.
So a future in which machines can perform more human labor raises questions that cannot be solved merely by asking whether everyone will still have enough money.
What role should work continue to play in human flourishing?
How should the economic gains created by AI be distributed?
What kinds of work should remain distinctly human?
And how do we make sure technological progress does not leave people economically unnecessary and socially disconnected?
These are exactly the kinds of questions Catholic social teaching can help us approach.
Power Requires Virtue
AI also gives humanity a kind of power we have never possessed before.
That makes virtue even more important.
Power itself does not guarantee wisdom.
The ability to do something does not mean it should be done.
Amanda and Jonathan point out that wielding enormous power well requires restraint, discipline, wisdom, and a strong moral foundation.
Without those virtues, technologies created to serve humanity can easily begin shaping humanity according to the goals of those who control them.
That is why this conversation cannot be left exclusively to engineers, CEOs, or policymakers.
The human person has to remain at the center.
Following Magnifica Humanitas With Us
This episode is only the introduction. Over the next five parts of the series, Amanda and Jonathan will work through the five chapters of Magnifica Humanitas.
The first two chapters lay much of the foundation by returning to Catholic social teaching and the principles that should guide the conversation.
The later chapters move more directly into AI, technology, human dignity, and how these developments are being applied in the modern world.
If you want to follow along, grab a copy of Magnifica Humanitas and begin with Chapter One before the next episode.
The goal of this series is not simply to decide whether AI is “good” or “bad.”
These technologies are already here, and they will continue to become more capable.
The more important task is learning how to engage them without losing sight of what makes us human.
As Catholics, we have a framework for doing exactly that: the dignity of the human person, the common good, the value of work, care for the vulnerable, and the conviction that technological progress must remain in service of humanity.
That is where this series begins.
