TOB Illuminates Leo XIV’s Encyclical on the Human Person and A.I.

In Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, he presents humanity with a decisive choice: to build a new Tower of Babel with power, uniformity, and technical self-sufficiency, or to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem with Nehemiah, patiently, together, and with God at the center. This choice is fundamentally anthropological. Throughout the encyclical, Leo XIV draws heavily on the wisdom of his predecessors, quoting Pope Francis 46 times, Pope Benedict XVI 15 times, and Pope St. John Paul II 37 times, underscoring his deep engagement with the living tradition of Catholic Social Teaching. Pope St. John Paul II’s vision of man, articulated in the Theology of the Body (TOB), offers three clear foundational principles that illuminate the encyclical and guide our response in the age of artificial intelligence.


First Principle: Human Dignity Is Grounded in Our Creation in the Image and Likeness of God

Human dignity rests on the foundational truth that every person is created in the image and likeness of God. From all eternity, God has revealed that His “being is Love … and, sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret: God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange” (CCC 221).

Pope St. John Paul II reiterates this in his encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem (Lord, the giver of life), “It can be said that in the Holy Spirit the intimate life of the Triune God becomes totally a gift, an exchange of mutual love between the divine Persons, and that through the Holy Spirit God exists in the mode of gift. It is the Holy Spirit who is the personal expression of this self-giving, of this being-love. He is Person-Love. He is Person-Gift” (DV 10).

It is the Person-Gift, the Spirit of God (Ruah Elohim), that is breathed into us at the moment of our creation. Our bodies therefore become a visible sign of this invisible reality (TOB 19:4). This truth finds its full revelation when the eternal Son assumes human nature. As Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed at the beginning of Redemptor Hominis: “The Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the universe and of history” (RH 1). “Christ, the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling” (RH 8, quoting Gaudium et Spes 22). By entering our history in the flesh, Christ reveals that every human person possesses infinite dignity precisely because he or she is created in the image and likeness of God and is called into communion with Him; therefore, the human person is not a machine to be optimized or a collection of data points. It is a living sign of the gift of God. Pope Leo XIV applies this same vision when he insists that human dignity is neither earned nor measured by capacity. In the face of systems that reduce persons to data or efficiency, Magnifica Humanitas reminds us that no computational system “can create a heart that gives itself, or a conscience that discerns good from evil … Even when machines excel in efficiency, a human face that asked to be gazed upon remains the center of our history… it is the fullness towards which history is moving” (MH 233). The human face of Christ remains at the center of history and the central ethos that man’s dignity is revealed through the second person of the Trinity taking on our flesh. 

Second Principle: The Person Discovers Himself Fully Only Through Sincere Self-Gift

Drawing on Gaudium et Spes 24, John Paul II taught that “man… cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” This is at the heart of his teaching on the “spousal attribute of the body” (TOB 15:1) and the mystery of its beatifying beginning, in which man does not realize “who he is on his own but by existing ‘with someone’—and even more deeply and completely—by existing ‘for someone’” (TOB 14:2). The person is created to become a gift and exists in and for communion. Self-gift is not optional; it is the path to authentic fulfillment and the foundation of a truly human culture. John Paul II develops this truth further in Centesimus Annus: “Indeed, it is through the free gift of self that man truly finds himself. … A society is alienated if its forms of social organization, production and consumption make it more difficult to offer this gift of self and to establish this solidarity between people” (CA 41).

Pope Leo XIV affirms the same truth and places it at the service of solidarity and the common good. In Magnifica Humanitas, the sincere gift of self is never merely private. It becomes the living principle of shared responsibility, the refusal to build a new Babel of power and isolation, and the choice to rebuild the walls of a common life together. Like Nehemiah, we are called to get our hands dirty at the construction site of our time and to be builders of communion (MH 16): persons who freely give themselves for the good of others. Self-gift creates communion; communion generates the common good; and the common good safeguards the dignity of every person against every form of technological or economic reduction.

Third Principle: The Dignity of the Person and the True Meaning of Work

Because every human person is created in the image and likeness of God and possesses an inviolable dignity, work must always serve the person, never the other way around. Although the Theology of the Body does not develop an explicit doctrine on the dignity of work, its reading of Genesis already points in this direction. The command to “subdue the earth” (Gen 1:28) is given to a person who is the subject of dominion, not its object. Human activity in the world is ordered to the flourishing of the one who bears God’s image.

This anthropological truth finds its full expression in Laborem Exercens, where Pope St. John Paul II teaches the priority of labor over capital: “Work is for man, and not man for work” (LE 6). The person is never a means of production. When technology or economic systems reverse this order, reducing the worker to efficiency, data, or output, they violate the very dignity that the Theology of the Body defends. Work exists so that the person may become more fully who he or she is called to be; the person does not exist to serve the demands of production.

This principle serves as a direct safeguard against every technocratic reduction of human beings. When efficiency, productivity, or data become the ultimate measures of value, the person is treated as an instrument rather than as a subject willed for his or her own sake. Pope Leo XIV echoes this anthropological truth in Magnifica Humanitas, warning that technology must never make the human person “a cog in a machine or a commodity” (MH 180). The dignity of work flows from the dignity of the worker, who remains always greater than what he produces.

In this digital age, the Church’s Social Teaching, illuminated by John Paul II’s vision of the human person, does not leave us as passive observers. It calls us to shared discernment and courageous action. Let us take up the work of Nehemiah. Let us be ‘architects of communion’ in the truth that every person is a gift from God, created for communion. Stone by stone, relationship by relationship, may we heed Pope Leo XIV’s call to help build the city where God and humanity dwell together.

Written by,

Courtney Brown,
Executive Director of Ruah Woods Institute