Rev. Vicky's Message September 10, 2026

I'm guessing a number of you, like me, saw recent headlines about a top scientist at the AI company Anthropic saying: “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” Adding, “we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”

According to American journalist and substack writer, Lucian K. Truscott IV, "'Alignment,' for those who are curious, is shorthand for making sure that the goals of humans align with the goals of the AI systems they are working on." (luciantruscott@substack.com)

Rather than go down the legitimately frightening rabbit hole of current AI threats, however, I thought I would instead reframe this discussion in light of the first Encyclical Letter of His Holiness Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas (15 May 2026), that addresses how artificial intelligence (AI) has created a pivotal choice for humanity, in much the same way the Industrial Revolution did in 1891. (An "encyclical" is the highest most personal level of ordinary papal teaching.)

I've been introduced to Pope Leo's encyclical by COPA - where it is being used to help us develop a moral foundation and inspiration for much of our current work.

And, to be transparent, I am relying on the explanations provided by Dr. Sean Tobin, author of the book, Remaining Human: A Plain-Language Companion to Pope Leo XIV's First Encyclical, to help me fully under-stand the Pope's encyclical.

With that caveat, as Tobin explains: "the encyclical is not the Church weighing in on technology the way a newspaper runs an opinion piece. It is the Church doing the exact thing it did in 1891 (in its response to the Industrial Revolution) refusing to let a powerful new system quietly redefine what a human being is for."

Tobin paraphrases the Pope saying, "The factory wanted to define a person as labor. The algorithm wants to define a person as data, as attention, as behavior to be predicted and steered." In both centuries, Tobin concludes, "the Church's answer is the same, and it is a stubborn: NO. The person comes first, the person is the point, and any machine that forgets this has to be made to remember."

Tobin also notes that early in the encyclical, Pope Leo explains that the technology is never neutral. It arrives already shaped, already pointed, already wanting something from us. And, while the machine can imitate our speech and our reasoning – it has “no joy or pain” of its own. It performs the outside of a person without the inside.

In short, Tobin notes, Pope Leo "lifts the AI question out of the seminar room and sets it down in the center of the Church's social doctrine, alongside labor, war, poverty, and peace." Concluding that "This is a justice question, and it belongs with the great ones."

Finally, Pope Leo has moved beyond describing the problem to "demanding action," repeatedly asking four questions:

• Who holds the power? (In whose hands is it, and to what end?)

• Whose dignity is at stake? (Who is being treated as a person, and

  who is being treated as a thing?)

• What is being lost? (What human capacity, attention, judgment,

  work, encounter, quietly erodes when the machine does it for us?)

• What does love require? (Not just what is permitted or efficient,

  but what would a civilization built on love actually do here?

The encyclical's title, the "Magnifica," holds the key. "My soul magnifies the Lord... He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly." Tobin suggests this "is the exact register in which Leo is writing: the powerful brought low, the small lifted up, a magnificent humanity precisely because it is humble."

May we, individually and collectively, embody this divine vision as we hold a high watch and help co-create a future that celebrates a humanity made in the image and likeness of God.

Humble Blessings,

Rev. Vicky