Just two days ago, in the morning of May 25th, something absolutely unusual happened in the Vatican's Synod Hall. HH. Pope Leo XIV walked into a room filled with cardinals, diplomats and also some top guys from the AI industry, and personally presented his first encyclical. That fact alone was historically unprecedented as it was the first time in history when a Pope himself attended the launch of his own documents. The encyclical was called Magnifica Humanitas ( Latin for "Magnificent Humanity"), and he said was addressed not just to Catholics but to "every person of goodwill"
The timing was most probably not accidental when we realise that, despite not having been widely commented, Leo XIV signed it on May 15th, the very exact 135 anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the landmark 1891 encyclical in which his predecessor and namesake Leo XIII responded to the dehumanization caused by the Industrial Revolution.
The message embedded in that date is impossible to miss, and drove the minds of everyone to the fact that we are right now living through another revolution of equal magnitude, and the Church has something urgent to say about it.
The document was written originally in English and to read it in that language was specially interesting as the powerful message was better perceived, as it happens when we, non native english speakers, watch an American movie in its original version. It's opening words set the tone with strong clarity, saying the following: "Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice, either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together"
