Pope Leo and the ‘Babel Syndrome’

What does it mean to be human when the very structure of thought, work, and belief is being rewritten by machines that learn? This is the question at the heart of Magnifica humanitas, the first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV, signed on May 15, 2026. The document is not a treatise on artificial intelligence. It is a treatise on the human person, composed from inside a technological revolution that has already altered the coordinates of experience. Taken together with the Rescriptum ex audientia issued the following day—establishing an interdicastery Commission on Artificial Intelligence uniting seven Vatican institutions—these two acts represent the most far-reaching institutional response to AI by any major religious body in the world.