One of the most striking aspects of Magnifica Humanitas is its denunciation of the new forms of slavery that accompany the digital revolution. Pope Leo XIV draws an explicit parallel between historical slavery and contemporary digital exploitation, and goes further: on behalf of the Church, he asks “sincere forgiveness” for the historical role of the Catholic Church in slavery, linking that acknowledgment to the risk that humanity will normalize exploitation in the production chain of new technologies.
The invisible labor behind AI
The encyclical describes the invisible labor that sustains AI: millions of people, mostly women and young people in countries of the Global South, who label data, moderate content (often appalling) and train models in exchange for minimal pay. “Bodies marked, mutilated, consumed so that the flow of calculations is not interrupted,” the Pope writes. On top of this comes the extraction of minerals essential to microprocessors, where teenagers and children work in dangerous conditions.
“It is not enough to invoke efficiency or to praise the benefits of innovation if they rest on a chain of exploitation that is deliberately kept hidden. If a technology promises emancipation but produces new forms of global subordination, it contradicts the fundamental principle of the dignity of the person.”
The Pope also denounces “digital colonialism”: the appropriation of the health, genetic, and demographic data of entire populations, often under the pretext of aid or research. “Colonialism today shows an unprecedented face. It no longer only dominates bodies; it appropriates data, turning personal lives into exploitable information.” Whoever holds the health data of entire populations, often collected under the pretext of aid, research, or innovation, holds a structural lever over the future: they can shape needs and markets, and decide where to direct medicines, investments, and protections.
The technocratic roots of exploitation
But the Vatican does not stop at denunciation; it offers a diagnosis of the roots of this exploitation. The root of these problems is a technocratic and posthumanist mindset, which tends to regard the person as a manipulable object or a resource to be optimized, eliminating everything that places limits on profit maximization. “Some posthumanist currents even go so far as to posit the existence of ‘second-class’ human beings, in the service of the interests of elites who perceive themselves as superior: a disturbing perspective, all the more serious when combined with technological instruments that exponentially expand the power of control and selection.”
The Pope recalls the history of the Church’s Social Doctrine on slavery. “It is true that events of the past cannot be judged ahistorically, as if all the criteria that have matured over time had always been available. Nevertheless, we cannot deny or minimize the delay with which the Church and society condemned the scourge of slavery.” The Pope acknowledges that it was necessary to wait until the nineteenth century for a formal, absolute, and universal condemnation of slavery, particularly under Leo XIII. “It is a wound in the Christian memory from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. It is inevitable to feel deep pain when considering the enormous suffering and humiliation that slavery has meant for so many people.”
“The memory of the complicity and blindness of the past in the face of the injustice of slavery becomes for us a call to vigilance: what we have learned must be translated into discernment and responsibility in the present. If we do not want to have to ask forgiveness in the future for not having been faithful to the treasure of human dignity that our faith contains, then today it falls to us to be direct and firm in denouncing trafficking in its many manifestations and in supporting, step by step, together with all those who are committed to this cause, real paths of prevention, protection, liberation, and rehabilitation.”
The impact of AI on work
The encyclical also addresses the labor impact of AI. The Pope calls fears of a massive and accelerated destruction of jobs “realistic” if innovation is applied solely to cut costs. He warns of the danger of falling into a paradox of “material progress and anthropological regression,” with “a multitude of excluded people surrounded by machines and automated systems that have taken their place.”
Work is not only a means of subsistence but a space for expression, relationships, and contribution to the community. “The human person is an end and not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to their dignity and to the common good.” The Pope criticizes the fact that the “new ways” of working are not necessarily better: workers are forced to adapt to the speed of machines, instead of the machines being designed to help those who work. This can “deskill workers, subject them to automated surveillance, and relegate them to rigid and repetitive tasks.”
The Pope calls for active policies of continuing education, professional retraining, and job protection, as well as corporate responsibility that includes the quality and dignity of work among the indicators of success. “In this transition, it is not enough to react when jobs disappear; the transformation must be managed proactively.”
How it compares with other global actors
Comparison with other global actors reveals the singularity of this position. The European Union has addressed the labor impact through directives on working conditions but has not made employment a central axis of its AI regulation. China sees automation as a tool for modernization and efficiency. The United States has taken a market approach: it assumes that innovation will generate new jobs that will offset those destroyed.
The Vatican thus positions itself as the most explicit voice in defending work as a fundamental good and in warning of the risks of uncontrolled automation, building a bridge between concern for employment and the denunciation of new forms of digital slavery that, like the colonialism of old, exploit entire bodies and territories for the benefit of a few.
