Montserrat Gas-Aixendri is a full professor of law and religion at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain).
This post is a part of our series on Magnifica Humanitas.
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (MH), offers a broad reflection on the challenges that artificial intelligence poses to human dignity, social life, and the future of human coexistence. The document begins from a fundamental premise: the proclamation of the Gospel cannot overlook the concrete lives of peoples and the new forms of injustice that affect human beings. Leo XIII had already demonstrated this in Rerum Novarum, inaugurating a tradition of Christian social thought attentive to the transformations of its time. If that Pope identified the workers’ question as the great social challenge of the first industrial revolution, Leo XIV regards artificial intelligence as one of the great res novaeof the twenty-first century, demanding appropriate moral and legal discernment (MH, para. 17).
One of the fundamental premises of Magnifica Humanitas is the affirmation of the ontological dignity of every human person, a dignity that does not depend on efficiency, productivity, or functional capacities but belongs to the human being simply by virtue of being human (MH, paras. 50–52). From this conviction, Leo XIV emphasizes the need to preserve the primacy of the person and to ensure that human intelligence, together with conscience and freedom, always guides technological innovation and responsibly determines its use and limits (MH, para. 97). The encyclical further stresses that no system of calculation can replace moral judgment, which belongs exclusively to the human person (MH, para. 198).
Against this background, I would like to propose a particular reading of the encyclical: namely, as an invitation to rethink freedom of conscience in the age of “algorithmic power.” To the extent that digital systems are capable of influencing available information, directing desires, shaping preferences, and conditioning decisions, the protection of conscience today requires attention not only to external forms of coercion but also to the cultural, educational, and technological conditions that make genuinely free judgment possible.
In this respect, an analogy may be drawn between Magnifica Humanitas and the declaration Dignitatis Humanae on religious freedom. The conciliar document understood religious freedom as a fundamental right rooted in the dignity of the human person and one that must be legally guaranteed so that no one is forced to act against their conscience or prevented from seeking and professing the truth both privately and publicly. In that context, the principal concern was to protect the inviolable sphere of conscience against the claims of the State or other public authorities. In the present context, however, that same concern appears to be projected onto a different scenario: the need to safeguard the person’s inner sphere against new forms of technological conditioning.
This intuition may also be expressed in legal terms through the concept of forum internum developed in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. (See Kokkinakis v. Greece, paras. 31–33.) The forum internum refers to the strictly internal dimension of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion—the sphere in which individuals adopt, maintain, modify, or abandon their convictions. Unlike the forum externum, which concerns the external manifestation of beliefs and is therefore subject to certain limitations, the forum internum enjoys absolute protection. The question raised by Magnifica Humanitas broadens and deepens the traditional understanding of freedom of conscience. Today, it is no longer sufficient merely to guarantee immunity from state coercion; it is equally—and perhaps even more—necessary to examine whether contemporary cultural and technological conditions allow the inner judgment of conscience to be formed and developed in a genuinely free manner.
Magnifica Humanitas points out that technology is not neutral, since it inevitably bears the imprint of those who design, finance, regulate, and use it. Consequently, the central issue is not simply whether technology should be accepted or rejected but whether its power is properly directed—whether it remains at the service of human dignity or becomes an instrument of domination, homogenization, and the reduction of the person (MH, para. 9). The encyclical insists that digital environments influence the way people perceive the world, introducing narratives and images into the collective consciousness and affecting everyday desires and decisions (MH, para. 135). Those who control digital platforms and media therefore possess considerable power to shape the collective imagination and to promote a particular vision of reality as desirable (MH, para. 136). The threat lies not so much in prohibiting specific convictions as in subtly influencing the context in which individuals develop their own judgments.
In this way, Magnifica Humanitas shifts the focus from the external legal protection of conscience to the protection of the conditions that make a genuinely free conscience possible. The encyclical maintains that the culture generated within digital networks must avoid becoming an instrument of distraction, homogenization, or domination and should instead foster the maturation of inner freedom and critical thinking (MH, para. 136). Hence the importance of an “ecology of communication,” grounded in transparency, data protection, strong intermediary institutions, serious journalism, fact-checking, and critical education in the use of digital technologies and artificial intelligence. Such an ecology is necessary because truth is a common good and not the property of those who possess power or visibility (MH, para. 137).
Freedom of conscience therefore requires more than merely formal guarantees. It demands persons capable of discernment, resistant to manipulation, and willing to pursue truth patiently. To this end, the encyclical proposes an “educational alliance” for the digital age. Acknowledging that the culture of immediacy and overstimulation can weaken the effort required to seek the truth, the document calls for a form of education capable of cultivating silence, reflective study, reading, thoughtful analysis, and attentional discipline, without which inner freedom may be seriously compromised (MH, paras. 139–47).
This concern becomes even more concrete when the encyclical addresses digital dependency and social control. Leo XIV warns that digital platforms and services may be deliberately designed to capture users’ time and attention, exploiting their vulnerabilities and weakening their inner freedom (MH, para. 170). The large-scale collection of data and the deployment of algorithmic systems create a new form of power: the power to profile, predict, and direct behavior, often without the full awareness of those affected. Today, control operates both through explicit prohibitions and through what may be called an “architecture of visibility,” meaning what is amplified or rendered invisible, rewarded or penalized, ultimately shapes opinions and choices, fostering conformity and self-censorship. Accordingly, the forum internum, understood as the freedom to form one’s own beliefs and convictions, also becomes, in a certain sense, a matter of public concern. The encyclical calls for clear regulations, transparency, effective remedies, and proportionate limits on the use of invasive technologies (MH, para. 171).
It is within this framework that the expression “disarming” artificial intelligence should be understood. This does not mean halting technological development but rather breaking the presumed equivalence between technological power and the right to govern. It does not entail rejecting technology but preventing it from dominating what is human; it means freeing it from monopolistic control, making it open to discussion and criticism, and thereby restoring the plurality of human cultures and ways of life (MH, para. 110).
To “disarm” artificial intelligence therefore means preventing artificial systems from replacing personal discernment, manipulating public opinion, reinforcing self-censorship, or delegating to machines decisions that require moral responsibility. As the encyclical states with particular clarity, moral judgment cannot be reduced to calculation because it involves conscience, personal responsibility, and recognition of the other as a person; consequently, it is not legitimate to entrust artificial systems with lethal or irreversible decisions (MH, para. 198). Although this statement refers specifically to warfare, its logic illuminates the broader issue of conscience: no technology can take the place of human moral judgment. Human intelligence, together with conscience and freedom, must guide technological innovation and establish its limits (MH, para. 97).
The passage from Dignitatis Humanae to Magnifica Humanitas may therefore be described as a movement from a conception of freedom understood primarily as immunity from coercion to a conception of freedom that also encompasses the conditions necessary for genuinely human, responsible, and truth-oriented judgment. The same tradition that sought to limit political power in order to safeguard religious freedom, freedom of thought, and freedom of conscience is now called on to limit technological power in order to protect the inner freedom of the person.
The encyclical also recovers, in a digital key, the intuition developed by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ through the concept of “integral ecology.” Just as social justice cannot be separated from environmental ecology, freedom of conscience cannot be separated from the communicative, educational, and technological environment in which conscience is formed. The “ecology of communication” proposed by Leo XIV is, in this sense, the logical extension of “integral ecology”: the human habitat is not limited to the physical environment or the economic order but also includes the symbolic, informational, and relational space in which individuals think, decide, and relate to one another.
In its conclusion, Magnifica Humanitas raises its gaze to the ultimate horizon that gives meaning to all that precedes: “No computational system, however sophisticated, can create a heart that gives itself, or a conscience that discerns good from evil” (MH, para. 233). This statement is not a poetic flourish at the end of a doctrinal document; it is its deepest thesis. Human conscience is not an algorithm designed to optimize outcomes but the place where individuals open themselves to truth, respond to the good, and recognize the other as a fellow human being. Protecting conscience is therefore not merely a legal task; it is a profoundly anthropological one. Against the technocratic promise of a human being enhanced, managed, and ultimately replaced by machines, the Christian faith proposes the conviction that human greatness lies precisely in its fragility and in its capacity to act freely in accordance with the judgment of conscience. Safeguarding that greatness in the age of artificial intelligence is, according to Leo XIV, the task that lies before both the Church and humanity.