Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (May 2026), was written to address artificial intelligence — but its deepest concerns are the same ones that animate the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda: human dignity, justice, and a future where all people to thrive, not just the powerful few.
The encyclical opens with a choice founded in Scripture: build a new Tower of Babel, driven by pride and dominance, or rebuild Jerusalem “brick by brick,” as Nehemiah did, through patient, shared responsibility. That image could describe the choice facing the international community as we enter the final four years to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We have finite time to work together to make as much progress as possible on the SDGs and we must make the choice to tackle the pernicious social, economic, and environmental challenges collectively “brick by brick” to build the future we desire. We must also resist the urge to immediately jump to the “beyond-2030” planning (possibly a new Tower of Babel), diverting precious time, energy and resources to a future conversation rather than remaining steadfastly in the present and working to resolve immediate needs and dismantle the structural barriers in front of us right now.
Pope Leo XIV insists that human dignity “does not depend on what [humans] achieve or produce,” a direct challenge to any system, economic or technological, that treats people as disposable when they’re no longer useful. He warns that new digital economies risk creating new forms of servitude, naming the young women who perform the hidden labor of data-labeling and the children mining rare-earth minerals for our devices. He calls, too, for the “universal destination of goods” — the Church’s centuries-old principle that creation belongs to all — to extend to data, algorithms, and digital infrastructure.
This recalls our Ignatian heritage and the First Principle and Foundation. The translation by David A. Fleming states: “God who loves us creates us and wants to share life with us forever. Our love response takes shape in our praise and honor and service of the God of our life. All the things in this world are also created because of God’s love and they become a context of gifts, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.” Tools like AI and other resources available to us are gifts from God and can become our love response to God, but only if we use them out of love and service of God and love and service of others.
For those of us working at the intersection of faith and UN advocacy, this encyclical offers something valuable: a theological vocabulary for arguments we already make about equity, decent work, and shared responsibility. It reminds us that the SDGs were never only a technical program. They are, at their best, an attempt to build something like the “civilization of love” the Pope describes — one brick, one community, one act of justice at a time.
As HLPF 2026 concludes and the Agenda’s final years begin, that reminder feels timely and ought to move us into intentional action.
Author: Sr. Sarah Rudolph, CJ
