The editors: The unfinished work that remains for the United States of America
Americans should reject the false choice between an uncritical celebration and a despair that is blind to the country’s virtues.
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Pope Leo XIV speaks with Anthropic cofounder Christopher Olah at the Vatican’s Synod Hall, May 25, 2026 (CNS photo/Lola Gomez).
Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica humanitas has fostered immediate and widespread engagement. Not since Laudato si’ has an encyclical been so widely discussed in legacy media, online, and in specialist forums. The eager response to the encyclical speaks to a hunger for discussion about what precisely the AI being pressed upon us is designed to do and whose interests it is furthering.
The encyclical lands at a critical moment. Spring graduates loudly and repeatedly booed commencement speakers’ blithe invocations of the inevitability of the AI future. Surveys consistently show that a majority of the public think AI will have a negative impact on their lives, and resistance to the frenzied buildout of data centers has emerged as a rare point of bipartisan consensus.