By: David Gibson - Mr. Gibson is the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University. Published in:* The New York Times* Date: May 22, 2026
Pope Leo XIV’s first landmark teaching document, to be published on Monday, is expected to explore a theme he has emphasized since beginning his papacy a year ago: social disruption in the digital age, in particular the dangers that A.I. poses for human flourishing. Titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” the document is inspired by the teachings of Leo’s eponymous predecessor, Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum <https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html>” responded to the plight of exploited workers in the Industrial Revolution. It is considered the modern foundation of Catholic social teaching. “In our own day,” Leo told the College of Cardinals <https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2025/may/documents/20250510-collegio-cardinalizio.html> two days after his election, “the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.” As a sign of the subject’s importance, the pope plans to make an unprecedented appearance <https://www.americamagazine.org/short-take/2026/05/19/pope-leo-ai-anthropic/#:~:text=Indeed%2C%20in%20a%20first%20for,Let%20that%20sink%20in.> at the news conference presenting the encyclical. Most popes since Leo XIII have published <https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/foundational-documents> encyclical <https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/foundational-documents> s about social teaching. But the subject has remained overshadowed by the absolute moral law regarding sins of the flesh. Dedicating his first encyclical to social justice would show how much Leo, like his predecessor Pope Francis, is trying to shift Catholicism away from the near fixation on “pelvic theology <https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/vatican-document-human-dignity-establishes-theological-guardrails> ,” or sexual morality, that has come to define Catholicism, especially in Leo’s home country, the United States. The concern is that decades of focusing on “sins below the waist,” as Pope Francis memorably put it <https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/pope-francis-blasts-reactionary-american-catholics-who-oppose-church-reform> , has fueled the church’s culture war agenda and driven many people away from the central teachings of the Gospels. It has also left workers and the marginalized with a weakened moral voice against the predations of powerful financial interests. Leo, of course, defends teachings like the church’s stance against abortion, but he embeds it in a wider context, such as when he defended the decision of the Archdiocese of Chicago to give Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, an abortion-rights Catholic, an award for his long work on behalf of immigrants. Conservative Catholics were incensed, but Leo told reporters <https://www.americamagazine.org/news/2025/09/30/pope-leo-sen-durbin-abortion-immigration-cupich/> that it’s important to look at the entirety of a person’s views. Leo was more explicit last month. When a reporter on the papal plane returning from a trip to Africa asked him about a controversy over the blessing of gay couples by priests, Leo said: “We tend to think that when the church is talking about morality, that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are much greater, more important issues, such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion, that would all take priority before that particular issue.” His response dismayed and even infuriated many social conservatives, both Catholic and Protestant. But Leo was not forging some new doctrine. On the contrary, he was articulating an older tradition of placing justice above personal chastity. “This statement would have seemed perfectly banal to a theologian of the late 16th century,” Jean-Pascal Gay, a professor of Christian history at the Catholic University of Louvain, wrote <https://www.la-croix.com/a-vif/la-justice-avant-la-sexualite-leon-xiv-a-rouvert-la-question-de-la-hierarchie-des-peches-20260507> in the Catholic newspaper La Croix. “In 2026, it has become almost subversive.” The church’s emphasis on sexuality began in earnest in the 16th century as moral theologians started to codify various aspects of Catholic practice, including producing manuals for clerics to use in assessing the gravity of sins in the confessional. Various sexual sins, from adultery to masturbation, were favorites because they were easy to judge — you either had sex or you didn’t. Figuring out when a person has been greedy or insufficiently charitable is harder. As a result, sexual sins became the gravest sins <https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/its-time-catholic-ethic-sees-sexuality-gift-not-curse> , a category unto themselves that assumed an outsize place in the venerable hierarchy of truths that ordered beliefs. The legalistic approach to sex and sin became commonplace. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and the loosening of restrictions on abortion in the 1970s turbocharged the push to focus on sexual ethics and sideline social justice. The 1978 election of John Paul II added to that momentum. The Polish pope, while a strong proponent of Catholic social teaching, was an especially forceful moralist on sexual ethics. Catholic conservatives in America made that moralism a priority, forging common cause with the rising religious right. Then in 2013 Pope Francis was elected, becoming the first Jesuit pontiff and the first from the Southern Hemisphere. Francis immediately made it clear that he had no interest in advancing America’s culture wars. “Who am I to judge?” he responded when asked a few months after his election about the status of gay priests in the church. He elaborated on that comment in a lengthy interview <https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2013/09/30/big-heart-open-god-interview-pope-francis/> in which he said the church should not talk only about abortion and gay marriage and contraception but needed to find a “new balance” by elevating other key teachings. Otherwise, he said, “the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards.” Leo’s similar approach does not mean that he is about to loosen the church’s sexual mores. During the news conference on his flight from Africa, he prefaced his response about gay blessings by saying that “the unity or division of the church should not revolve around sexual matters.” He wants to welcome everyone, and has made a point of meeting with gay Catholics, for example. But he does not want to alienate those who may disagree. Leo wants a sexual devolution, if you will. This approach, and this new encyclical, is arriving at a propitious moment. The disruptions of the post-liberal world and the threats posed by A.I. have led many cultural conservatives to make economic justice a priority. The Trump administration’s crusade against immigrants and foreign aid have united the U.S. hierarchy in opposition. The Dobbs decision largely defused abortion as a culture war issue in the United States, and gay marriage continues to recede as a concern. Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota, the American prelate most closely identified with Donald Trump, has said he would not push to change laws on gay marriage and compared the church’s “harping” on sexual ethics to the disastrous attempt by the Allied forces in World War I to take Gallipoli. “A good cause, but the wrong strategy,” Bishop Barron has said. Leo, on the other hand, is not beating a tactical retreat from any issue but instead is expanding the scope of the church’s teachings, much as Francis did with his encyclical on the environment, “Laudato sí.” Like climate change, A.I. is a scientific topic. But the Catholic approach is theological and social. A.I. can do remarkable things, but it can also sow disinformation and division. Leo stresses wisdom and relationships. His holistic view of mankind is reflected in the very title of this new encyclical. Our shared humanity, the pope is saying, is a sacred reality, and that carries a social responsibility. David Gibson is the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University and has covered the Vatican as a journalist for four decades.
