Leo XIV: What does his first encyclical tell us?

Leo XIV’s encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas, has a Latin title, but it doesn’t yet have a Latin version.

The encyclical was the last to arrive at the Office of Latin Letters; the original version is expected to be in English and Italian, so the editio typica will likely be Latin, but it will be the Latin translated retroactively.

According to InfoVaticana, the first portal to note this peculiarity or at least to give it importance, the lack of a Latin edition testifies to the Church’s abandonment of Latin, and therefore a loss of identity.

Symbolically, in fact, there is some particular weight attached to the document’s release in vernacular languages before there was even a Latin edition prepared.

This detail says something about the transition the Church is currently experiencing, but it says very little about the Catholic Church’s loss of identity.

Indeed, Latin was reaffirmed as the official language of the Church in the last general regulations of the Roman Curia issued in November 2025. Indeed, the original editions of the latest encyclicals, the so-called reference editions, have long been in Latin, but are in common languages.

Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ had an initial version in Spanish. Other encyclicals were conceived in Italian. Magnifica Humanitas is likely based on English, because it was drafted by the office headed by Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny, who also spoke in English at the presentation press conference, and because it was handed over to the Pope, who is American and obviously has more ease with his native tongue than with any other.

In short, the original edition has not been the Latin edition for some time.

The question, however, is why the Latin edition has not yet been drafted and published. The reason is simple: the Office of Latin Letters was the last to receive the complete text of the encyclical.

Like all papal documents, the encyclical was strictly confidential until publication.

For this reason, the Dicastery for Integral Human Development gathered the opinions of various experts and compiled them into a lengthy text that summarized all the themes of the social doctrine. In some cases, the dicastery entrusted sections of the translation to trusted collaborators, but never the entire text.

In short, there was fear of a possible leak, which led the drafters to keep the document virtually under lock and key, preventing anyone from gaining a comprehensive view of it. Furthermore, the document did not involve all the relevant ministries, but only a few experts selected by the drafters.

Magnifica Humanitas is a document by experts, but not a collegial document of the Roman Curia.

The lack of coordination is evident in several details. For example, the complete absence of any mention of the Rome Call for AI Ethics, nor of the concept of algorithmics, developed within the same initiative. This was an initiative of the Pontifical Academy for Life that brought together Big Tech companies to advance the ethical development of artificial intelligence. The project was later endorsed by other religious organizations, becoming an interfaith initiative.

Not only that.

Such a lengthy document also lacks references to other crucial texts, and even recent speeches by Vatican diplomats on the issue of artificial intelligence and its governance. For example, there is no reference to the idea of a global authority on artificial intelligence to oversee its development and ethical implications, as proposed by Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher in a speech to the United Nations in September 2023.

The encyclical has indeed gathered the opinions of several experts, but it has virtually cut ties with every other Vatican initiative undertaken before it.

There’s the encyclical, there’s the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (which is expected to lead the new inter-departmental commission on AI established by Leo XIV), and there’s a future that no longer concerns the relationships already established with Big Tech, but with other companies like Anthropic, which, among other things, is appreciated for refusing to release its technology for military purposes.

These shortcomings reveal a Roman Curia in which department remains a silo, without coordination and (paradoxically) without a history.

The memory of the work accomplished in the Curia seems to have been erased, replaced by new expressions. It’s true that the encyclical contains a substantial section summarizing previous encyclicals on social doctrine. But this is merely didactic and fails to truly highlight the concrete consequences of that work on social doctrine.

Indeed, the document Antiqua et Nova of the Dicasteries for the Doctrine of the Faith and for Culture and Education, dedicated precisely to the theme of artificial intelligence, appears for the first time in note 123.

What does this situation tell us?

For one thing, it means the Curia inherited by Leo XIV is still deeply divided.

There are free agents who are eager to exploit their freedom to bring documents and pronouncements to their own devices, severing ties with the past. There are departments that still live by the prejudices of Pope Francis’s time and are therefore excluded from discussions. There is also a Secretariat of State that appears to be an interested and vaguely involved spectator. The symbolic moment that explained this situation was when Cardinal Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, was called upon to moderate the presentation of the encyclical itself, in the presence of the pope.

All the opinions arrived disjointed and were then integrated into a lengthy text that encompasses a wealth of topics. It’s a particularly long encyclical, three times longer than Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate, and it doesn’t offer many innovations, although at times it risks succumbing to too much rhetoric.

In this situation, Latin—which no one in the know speaks anymore—has become the least of anyone’s worries.

Simply put, the institution and its language have become the last problem, because the ministries themselves are more engaged in this tug-of-war over responsibilities than in defending the structure as it is.

It’s not a plan, even if it seems like one.

The loss of institutionality and the management of power based on confidentiality makes us lose sight of the fact that everyone works for a larger world, with its own language and protocol.

Of late, these banalities been overlooked. They are humdrum facts of Vatican life, but folks lost sight of them some time ago.

Suffice it to recall that the announcement of Pope Francis’s death was made in a YouTube message by three cardinals and an archbishop, among whom was neither the Dean of the College of Cardinals nor the Pope’s Vicar for the Diocese of Rome (who are supposed to deliver the message), and among whom was no one wearing the red piping instead of the clergyman.

Latin will come, and it will be the editio typica.

Magnifica Humanitas, however, has shown that the pope will have his work cut out for him to bring the entire Curia to work together, to overcome personalisms, to create a peaceful mechanism where everyone can exchange information and benefit from each other’s work.