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Original article: Cuando la Iglesia habla más claro que la izquierda

On the Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV

By Daniel Jadue

On May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV personally presented his first encyclical to the world. Titled Magnifica Humanitas, the document spans 235 pages and focuses entirely on artificial intelligence. It was signed on May 15, coinciding with the 135th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s publication of Rerum Novarum, the encyclical that famously aligned the Church’s social doctrine with workers against industrial capitalism. This date, of course, serves as a declaration of intent.

The first question that arises, especially for a self-respecting Marxist, is disconcerting: Why has the most radical analysis of technological capitalism currently available been written by the Bishop of Rome, and not by the Latin American left?

This question deserves an honest attempt at an answer before delving into the document.

I. What the Encyclical Truly Says

Magnifica Humanitas presents a political-economic analysis of contemporary technological capitalism, articulated with the clarity of someone who has studied colonial history and remembers it well. Leo XIV, the first American pope in history and, not coincidentally, a mathematics graduate, speaks with authority.

The central diagnosis is that artificial intelligence is not a neutral tool. It is imbued with the biases, commercial interests, and values of the individuals who program and finance it. This is not a leftist opinion; it is a materially accurate description of how technology is produced. Algorithms do not fall from the sky; they are written by engineers working for corporations with shareholders, whose interests do not necessarily align with those of humanity at large, let alone with the working class.

However, what makes Magnifica Humanitas a politically extraordinary document are its specific conclusions. The Pope demands an international treaty prohibiting Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems: machines that decide who to kill without human intervention. “No algorithm can make war morally acceptable,” he writes, with the ‘no’ being an absolute prohibition that no G7 government is willing to express.

He denounces what he terms data colonialism: the model wherein developing countries provide cheap labor to train and moderate content on AI platforms, while profits and control remain concentrated among the monopolies of the Global North. He proposes that AI patents with significant social impact in health, education, and food be treated as part of humanity’s heritage, ensuring universal access. He warns that automation cannot be an excuse to discard workers: “the right to meaningful work” is non-negotiable.

In short, this is the document that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has unsuccessfully attempted to produce for years, and which no government in the countries controlling AI has been willing to sign.

II. The Parallel the Church Is Unafraid to Establish

The choice of the name Leo XIV was not accidental, as the pontiff explained to the cardinals who elected him: “I chose the name Leo mainly because Pope Leo XIII, in his historic encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.” The analogy the Pope establishes deserves serious consideration but also careful analysis.

The Rerum Novarum of 1891 was the first globally significant document to recognize that the workers’ question was not merely a public order issue but a matter of justice. Leo XIII was neither a Marxist nor a socialist: he rejected class struggle and defended private property. However, he acknowledged that industrial capitalism was producing exploitative conditions that moral doctrine could not overlook. The Rerum Novarum served, in Gramscian terms, as a tool for stabilizing capitalism in crisis by offering concessions to labor to prevent socialism from becoming the only available response.

Leo XIV makes the same move a century and a half later. Magnifica Humanitas does not challenge the private ownership of technological means of production. It does not question who should own the data generated by artificial intelligences or the infrastructures that support them. It does not advocate for the socialization of platforms. It remains at the level of regulation, proposing ‘algor-ethics’ and principles of transparency and fairness to guide technological development. Once again, this is a proposal for regulated capitalism rather than a challenge to capitalism itself.

Naming that limit does not diminish the document; it helps to understand its proper scope.

III. The Question the Document Does Not Answer

The encyclical proposes that algorithms be designed according to criteria of transparency, inclusiveness, accountability, and fairness. This is a reasonable and necessary demand. However, the most crucial question that this demand does not answer is: who has the power to enforce it?

OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, and Anthropic collectively control over 80% of the generative artificial intelligence infrastructure available worldwide. Their combined valuations exceed four trillion dollars. The founders and major shareholders form the same constellation that operates as the technological wing of the neoreactionary project: Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk, and their networks. When the Pope calls them to adopt principles of ‘algor-ethics’, he is asking the very fraction of capital that has decided that democracy and freedom are incompatible to voluntarily limit their power.

The history of capitalism, from Rerum Novarum to the Paris Agreement, teaches us that corporations do not voluntarily limit their power. They do so when the cost of failing to comply exceeds the cost of regulation, and that calculus is determined by political power dynamics, not moral principles. Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ in 2015 was, as Magnifica Humanitas is expected to be, a document comparable in scope to Rerum Novarum. Its principles on integral ecology are flawless, yet CO₂ emissions have continued to rise year after year.

The gap between a correct moral diagnosis and effective structural transformation cannot be bridged by ethical principles alone. It is bridged by organized power.

IV. Why This Matters for the Latin American Left

I return to the initial question: why has the most radical analysis of technological capitalism recently been written by the Pope?

Part of the answer is situational. Leo XIV is an unconventional pontiff: the first American in papal history, with a background in mathematics, who has multiplied warnings about AI since the very day of his election and was featured in Time magazine’s list of the most influential people in artificial intelligence for 2025. He is not a transitional pope; he has his own intellectual agenda.

But another part of the answer is more uncomfortable: the Latin American left has not produced a comparable analysis of technological capitalism because it has been too busy managing its consequences within the frameworks that this capitalism has designed. We have debated how to regulate digital platforms on the margins, how to protect personal data within existing commercial law, how to ensure ‘digital access’ as if the problem were connectivity rather than ownership. We have not questioned who should own the data that Latin American workers generate daily through their searches, purchases, conversations, and work on platforms constructed by the Global North to extract it.

In Chile, the Kast government signs a tax invariability agreement for 25 years to attract technological investment while deregulating the Environmental Impact Assessment System to accelerate the extraction of lithium required for AI batteries. This is the data colonialism that Leo XIV denounces, applied to land and minerals: Chile supplies the raw materials, while the Global North retains the value. Notably, this is driven by the most religious and conservative president in Chile’s history.

V. How to Utilize This Document

The Latin American left does not need to convert to Catholicism to use Magnifica Humanitas. What it needs is to understand that the encyclical produces an invaluable political resource: the language of universal human rights and the moral authority of the oldest religious institution in the West applied to a critique of technological capitalism that Latin American neoliberalism cannot counter without exposing itself.

When Kast or Milei attempt to establish data servers in free zones without regulation, when they sell Bolivian or Chilean lithium to corporations that train their models with it, when they justify labor automation as efficiency without offering alternative income provisions, Magnifica Humanitas provides the moral framework for critique. It is not a Marxist framework. But in politics, allies are chosen by their actions, not by their motivations.

The left’s task is to go further than the encyclical. Where the Pope calls for algor-ethics, we must demand collective ownership of data. Where the Pope calls for algorithmic transparency, we must demand democratic control of platforms. Where the Pope calls for the right to meaningful work, we must insist that the wealth generated by automation be distributed among those who created the knowledge from which machines learn. The encyclical sets the foundation; our obligation is to build the structure.

Pope Leo XIV signed his encyclical on May 15, on the anniversary of Rerum Novarum. Marx published the first volume of Capital in 1867, twenty-four years prior. Both read the same Industrial Revolution and reached different conclusions about what to do with it. We have read the same history. We know which of the two traditions has advanced furthest in transforming property relations. The question is whether we have the honesty to articulate it clearly, and the organization to do it effectively.

Daniel Jadue

Architect, sociologist, and Chilean politician. Mayor of Recoleta (2012–2024).

La entrada When the Church Speaks More Clearly Than the Left: Analyzing Pope Leo XIV’s Encyclical on AI se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.