The Mirror and the Man:

What Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas Demands of Educators

Introduction: The Wrong Question

A few minutes before a meeting, I generated a best practices document for my peers. It was clearly AI-generated and an overload of ideas. My principal rightly admonished me for handing out something so un-human and impossible to carry out. This was the first time I passed out something that was AI-generated without reworking, and I was convicted that it would be the last time. I bring up this anecdote to draw attention to the convenience of AI and the human costs which are often discovered only later. Having a neat new toy is a real temptation.

My peers and I experiment with using AI. Sometimes, the outcome is beneficial, such as brainstorming a way to make a lesson more engaging. Other times, it comes off as sloppy: a worksheet generated without any adaptation signals to the students that they are not worth the educator’s time. As a Catholic educator, the conversation about AI comes up relatively often. The focus generally centers on students: detection, policy, and academic integrity. This is the wrong starting point.

In Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, released on May 25, 2026, the question is reframed: it is not about what the students are doing with AI, but what kind of humanity is being brought to it.

My contention, from the early days of AI, continues to be that AI is not neutral but a mirror. Large language models (LLMs) augment what the user brings to it. A vicious person will become more vicious. A virtuous person, on the other hand, may become more virtuous, but he or she might also just become more productive. He or she may even become more vicious over time without realizing it. The implication for Catholic education runs deeper than policy and reaches into the interior life of the educator.

The Problem: A Wrong Anthropology

Pope Leo sees technological progress as “valuable in itself” but he says that it requires “careful discernment of the anthropological vision that guides it and the ends it pursues.” (94) This is not just a warning about AI, but describes a pathology already present in education before the dawn of AI. If persons are evaluated according to the outcomes they produce, then the system is stuck in a functionalist temptation, only intensified by AI.

The functional view of the human person is a false one which does grave injury to dignity. In paragraph 52 of the latest encyclical, the Pope develops a fourfold distinction of dignity in which the word dignity refers to “the way in which a person directs his or her choices and actions” (moral dignity), “a person’s living conditions and the concrete respect received from society” (social dignity), “the way in which a person perceives his or her own worth and the value of life” (existential dignity), and “the dignity that belongs to every human being simply by virtue of existing, of having been willed, created and loved by God” (ontological dignity). None of these aspects of dignity allow for a schoolwide system which sees dignity as earned and persons as productive units, whether in curriculum, assessment, or teacher evaluation.

Schools, like all human communities, must be places where limits are seen as “a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship.” (118) The Pope sees the development of AI as a promise to eliminate limits, such as illness, suffering, and vulnerability. The educator who is formed by a wrong anthropology, by imbibing the poison of the world, will use AI to correct supposed defects and limits for themselves and for students.

The Mirror of Artificial Intelligence

If it is the case that AI reflects and amplifies what the user brings, then there are far-reaching consequences for education and the educator. The impatient teacher gets more efficiently impatient. The curious teacher gets a more generative curiosity. The intellectually lazy teacher gets more sophisticated in his or her laziness. The vicious use of AI is not primarily a problem for students; it follows the formation of the person using it. It is possible that the student should not use AI because they are not properly formed and developed. The prefrontal cortex of the student is not done growing. The formation is, by nature of adolescence, in flux.

Thus, it is for parents, educators, and administrators, to determine not how AI should be used, but as the Pope says, “Educating people about the use of Al, then, involves teaching them to decide when and for what purpose it ought not to be used.” (140)

Formation precedes the use of any tool, however. Pope Leo states beautifully that,

“In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human. We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace. True progress always stems from a heart open to others, an intelligence willing to listen and a will that seeks what unites rather than what separates.” (15)

The burden of this claim does not fall to the student but to the educator who is called to embody what a machine cannot replace. The humanity of the student cannot be protected by the depleted humanity of the educator who has allowed his or her formation to be twisted and critical thinking and creative skills to atrophy.

In a surprising and utterly awesome turn of events, the Pope quotes Gandalf from the Return of the King as saying, “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” (213; Tolkien, Return of the King, Ch. Part III, book five, chapter IX) The responsibility for using AI ethically and safeguarding humanity is modest and personal. No one is called to master the tides. Each person is called to discern their own use of each tool at their disposal, including AI.

Subsidiarity Applied Institutionally

This document Magnifica Humanitas is a masterclass of Catholic Social Doctrine. The Pope spends a good deal of time walking through the main themes of the social teaching of the Church and its development over the past century and a half. One of those overarching themes is subsidiarity. In Quadragesimo Anno, Pope Pius XI explicates this “weighty principle”:

“Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.” (Quadragesimo Anno, 79)

Pope Leo XIV does not seek to redefine subsidiarity but applies it to today’s concerns. He says that digital environments should be safeguarded by local communities, schools, and the like (see 72). The Pope does not see this participation as optional, rather it is an obligation of subsidiarity further demanding that “decisions regarding data, algorithms, platforms and artificial intelligence take into account not only the immediate benefit for a few, but also the impact on all peoples and on future generations.” (76) This is a tall order! The short term needs of educators and students tend to focus on quarters, semesters, or academic years. Often, even administrators are consumed by the ever-going actions of “putting out fires.” Yet, the Pope reminds of the importance of taking a closer look at digital systems to ensure that they have a positive effect on future generations.

As it concerns AI, schools should not be consumers of policy handed down from dioceses, vendors, or secular frameworks. Schools should be generators of AI policy, working within their own anthropological and theological commitments. Inaction does not mean that AI will be kept at bay; instead, the policies will gradually be dictated by secular transnational corporations like Google and Apple without the knowledge of educators and administrators. This is not because those individuals are unintelligent, but because AI is being implemented more quickly than is imaginable. Proactive policies which safeguard the humanity of students and educators is a timely concern.

Importantly, the Pope says, schools are not expected to “follow the pace of the digital world, but to offer that which the digital sphere by itself cannot provide, namely a shared time for learning and developing trustworthy relationships.” (147) Trustworthy relationships and shared time between students and educators, administrators, parents, and local community members are irreplaceable. The presence of a formed human being in a room with students is irreducible.

Forming the Educator First

The generality of Magnifica Humanitas is necessary because it is a universal encyclical. The Pope admits that there is much more to say. I would like to offer a couple of thoughts from the vantage point of education. The Christian anthropology which Pope Leo presents warrants a deeper examination of education.

The Pope does write that “the advance of information technologies and Al is rapidly rendering curricula obsolete that were designed for a different era.” (145) This is an intriguing thing to say. What about the curricula in use is obsolete? Certainly, the great books are still great. The Faith is still perennial. The objective truths of mathematics and grammar are still foundational.

What is changing is the world and with it the implicit formation of the educators and students interacting with the truth. This is why the Pope says in the next breath:

“It is necessary to support the ongoing formation of teachers throughout their professional lives, so that they can engage positively with new technologies, helping students to use them responsibly, critically and creatively, rather than passively succumbing to their influence.” (147)

The responsible, critical, and creative use of new technologies is worth examining rigorously at the institutional and personal level.

If it is true that AI mirrors the user, then the primary formation question for schools is not student digital literacy but educator human literacy. What does it mean to be a formed human being in the presence of a technology that reflects you back?

Teaching students to decide when and for what purpose AI ought not to be used only works if the educator has already made that judgement about their own practice. You cannot teach discernment that you have not exercised for yourself.

The well-formed educator is one who brings authentic humanity to AI which means intellectual curiosity, genuine care and concern for the subject and the student, moral seriousness and integrity, and the willingness to be present to human limitations and suffering. This kind of user engages the mirror of AI and the experience becomes the opportunity for a generative fruitfulness rather than an atrophying deformation.

Conclusion: Rebuilding the Wall

In the encyclical, the Pope uses the scriptural examples of the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem by Nehemiah to show the two paths set before each person. Babel is not just an institutional failure but is what happens when individuals sacrifice their humanity and faith in the one, true God to the false god of progress and homogenous unity. On the other hand, Jerusalem is not rebuilt by policy but by people who bring their whole selves, formed by God, to the section of the wall that they have been assigned.

The “wall” for the educator is the classroom. The work set before each of us is to build up the people in front of us, bringing the best of us to the task. As the Pope invites: “technological evolution does not follow a predetermined path but can be guided by personal and collective responsibility.” (239) It is incumbent upon you and me to do the work set before us with full vigor and full humanity, always rooted in Christ, to the glory of God.