The Pope’s publication this week of Magnifica Humanitas, “on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” feels like a jolt, a beacon, or at least like a reassurance against a shift in the global discourse that has deprioritized “development.”

His letter is extensive and wide-ranging. It would be folly to review it in its entirety. Others have already offered impressions identifying the importance of an earlier 1891 Vatican pronouncement on worker’s rights, noting the contradictions of naming invisible AI labor while sharing a stage with its beneficiaries, and suggesting that the Pope engaged insufficiently with the prospects of humanity someday having to live with another intelligent species of its own creation. Honestly, I hope there are a thousand takes to read, because the Pope indeed invited us to do so, “to engage in dialogue with all men and women of our time, with whom we share in the events, questions and aspirations of humanity” (¶2).

In this note I want to focus narrowly on what connects specifically to the digital development community—working under the somewhat ungainly acronym “AI4D”—and a broader movement called “AI for Good.” What does the encyclical say to these communities, whose everyday work is making technology better serve the global majority?

Three things stand out to me:

The Pope acknowledges that the technology is moving too fast and is too sprawling for any single definition of artificial intelligence (¶97). He has little to say on artificial general intelligence (AGI) or machines that can actually think and feel, choosing instead to focus on systems that “imitate” and “simulate” “certain functions of human intelligence” (¶99). But if he is a bit sparse on technical definitions, he is positively unflinching on the human dimensions. He defines what “good” means: “Progress is measured by the dignity of each person and the good of all peoples” (¶12). The encyclical is called Magnifica Humanitas, not Magnifica Intelligentia Artificialis. It starts with humans and never loses sight of them. From that anchor, everything else flows: regulation, labor protections, truth, ecological responsibility, governance. The coherence is striking, and it is available to the Pope precisely because the Catholic Church has been working through the relationship between technology, society, work, and human dignity since at least Rerum Novarum in 1891.

The most direct engagement with the endeavor of “development” comes in ¶82 through 85, where the Pope describes development as “a duty and a right” for individuals and nations alike. Development is a proving ground for the project of a better future. In the digital age, the Pope writes, “a just social order guarantees everyone equal access to opportunities, protects the youngest and weakest members of society, combats hate and misinformation and subjects the use of data and technology to public oversight, so that the guiding principle is not solely profit but the dignity of every person and the common good of all people” (¶80).

If AI cannot be made to work for the global majority in a dignifying way, it is difficult to see how it works in a morally defensible way anywhere. The Pope grounds this test in the imago Dei; a lay development practitioner might ground it in rights and a Rawlsian frame. Different foundations and traditions, but with a similar practical commitment. Development is where the constraints are real, where the impacts are most visible, and where responsible AI practice meets its hardest tests.

For some readers, this is a familiar refrain. But this document elevates the claim from a technical observation (the kind heard at conferences) to a moral one backed by the full weight of Catholic social teaching. “Ethical discernment cannot be limited to asking whether we are using a system for good or bad purposes,” he writes. “It must also examine how that system is designed and what vision of the human person and society is embedded in the data and the models that guide it” (¶104).

The Pope goes beyond the observation that AI has biases, reminding us that those who shape these technologies are engaged in the creation of a culture (¶135), embedding a vision of society whether they intend to or not. As a communication researcher, I recognize this distinction: it is one of the fundamental divides in my field, between transmission and meaning-making. The Pope has come down firmly on the meaning-making side. AI is not merely a tool, it is a system that reflects power and beliefs, and thus the design choices made about it carry moral weight.

He goes further still. “A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few,” he writes (¶107). The communities and intermediary organizations affected by these systems “should not be reduced to passive recipients of decisions made elsewhere” (¶108). Throughout, the Pope keeps agency squarely with people. The optimism in this document rests on human responsibility: people act through AI, and they are accountable for what they build.

In the encyclical’s most vivid image, the Pope invites us to view the work ahead as a “construction site” (¶16, ¶236–241), and he draws a pointed contrast. On one side stands the Tower of Babel, a few building upward for their own glory. On the other stands the biblical story of Nehemiah, in which a community of returned exiles rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem together, each group assigned a section, working side by side for shared protection.

Which kind of edifice is humanity building through AI? The question is not only what we are building, but how and why. The Pope warns against sectoral myopia: “When people limit themselves to looking only at their own sector, they may deceive themselves and believe that they are performing actions that are morally neutral” (¶209). This is a direct challenge for digital development practitioners who reach for tools built by large private companies to bring about good in the world. It is an invitation to keep an eye on the quandaries and challenges of the bigger picture while doing the day-to-day work.

And a construction site is not immaterial, not merely abstractions or code. “Nothing in the world of AI is immaterial or magical,” the Pope reminds us. “Every seemingly immediate and flawless response is the result of a long chain of mediation, involving vast networks of natural resources, energy infrastructure, and above all, people” (¶173). Perhaps echoing Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI, the Pope calls our attention to the ecological costs of AI, and to the data labelers, the content moderators, the invisible workers sustaining algorithmic systems (¶109). They are on this construction site too. AI is as much of them and for them as it is for those with the yachts and the helipads.

The Pope’s invitation to civil society, to faith communities, to educators, to researchers, to “enter the construction sites of history” (¶241), arrives at a moment when many in development feel sidelined or underfunded, uncertain whether the world still values the work of making technology serve people it currently leaves behind.

I know Caribou accepts this invitation. We will continue to work on many parts of the AI transformation: through how we apply it, reflectively and intentionally, in our own practice; through the tools we advise clients to adopt and deploy; and through the AI systems we help partners shape. This new encyclical does not read like reports from the UN or the World Bank or an NGO. But it is in direct dialogue with them. The digital development community has an important role in the global construction site the Pope describes. This work “for development” and “for good” must continue with a clear eye on universal human dignity. Let us, as the Pope says, “not be afraid to get our hands dirty.”