From Mirari vos (1832) to Magnifica humanitas (2026): The Development of Catholic Teaching on Communication, Technology, and Human Dignity

Abstract

This article examines the development of Catholic reflection on media, communication, and technology from nineteenth-century debates over press freedom to contemporary interventions on artificial intelligence. Drawing on a purposively selected corpus of Catholic documents issued at the universal level between 1832 and 2026, it combines historical–hermeneutical reconstruction, comparative document analysis, and juridical–institutional interpretation. The study distinguishes three heuristic phases: defensive regulation and the construction of Catholic media institutions; pastoral appropriation, dialogue, media education, and digital adaptation; and, since 2020, an anthropological deepening accompanied by growing concern with the political, economic, juridical, and social structures of AI. Particular attention is given to the Rome Call for AI Ethics, the two papal messages of 2024, Antiqua et nova, and Magnifica humanitas. The article argues that this history does not reveal an unchanged doctrine of human dignity, but a developing anthropological concern whose vocabulary, theological grounding, and normative function change over time. Earlier concerns with truth, moral order, ecclesial responsibility, and the salvation of souls are progressively reformulated through communication as communion, participation, rights, human agency, and integral human development.

1. Introduction

The modern history of Catholic engagement with media and technology reflects more than a sequence of institutional reactions to technological change. It reveals a continuing negotiation of authority, social order, anthropology, and the conditions under which the Church understands itself as present within changing public environments. From the condemnation of unrestricted press freedom in Mirari vos (1832) to contemporary ethical debates surrounding artificial intelligence in Magnifica humanitas (2026), Catholic institutions have repeatedly reconsidered their relationship to emerging forms of communication. In doing so, they have addressed not only the uses and dangers of particular technologies but also questions concerning truth, moral responsibility, ecclesial authority, human agency, and the theological meaning of communication itself.

This article’s analysis begins with Mirari vos, not because Catholic reflection on communication originated in the nineteenth century, but because the encyclical represents a distinctive confrontation with the conditions of modern mass communication: the expanding periodical press, liberal claims to freedom of expression, the formation of public opinion, and the increasing contestation of ecclesiastical authority within the public sphere.

Artificial intelligence represents a particularly significant development within this longer trajectory. Earlier media technologies had already transformed religious authority, public discourse, and the social circulation of knowledge. AI, however, intensifies and reconfigures these questions by linking communication technologies with automated decision-making, the simulation of cognitive and linguistic capacities, and the growing power of algorithmic systems to shape social institutions and individual behaviour. The resulting challenge is therefore not limited to determining how a new technology should be used. It also concerns how human intelligence, judgement, embodiment, freedom, and responsibility are to be understood in environments increasingly structured by computational systems.

Scholarship on Catholic media teaching has reconstructed important stages in the Church’s engagement with mass communication and technological change. Historical and theological studies have examined the development from early twentieth-century reflection on film and broadcasting through Inter mirifica, Communio et progressio, and the subsequent reception of digital media. Caccamo (2008), for example, interprets modern Catholic teaching on social communication through four phases—emergence, development, institutionalisation, and application to new technologies—and identifies formation and regulation as recurring dimensions of this tradition. More recently, Vitullo et al. (2025) have traced the Catholic Church’s approach from radio to artificial intelligence, emphasizing the continuing effort to balance technological appropriation with attention to ethical and spiritual risks, as well as the increasingly pragmatic engagement with information and communication technologies during the pontificate of Pope Francis. Related studies have addressed particular moments and questions within this development, including the theology of social communication, ecclesial uses of the internet, the negotiation of Catholic authority in digital environments, and emerging Catholic discourse on social media and artificial intelligence (Campbell and Vitullo 2016; Theng 2026).

These specifically Catholic debates form part of a broader interdisciplinary field concerned with the mutually constitutive relationship between religion and media. Research on mediation and mediatisation has challenged instrumental accounts in which media appear merely as neutral channels employed by pre-existing religious institutions. Instead, media are understood as environments and cultural forms that participate in the construction of religious authority, community, practice, and public visibility (Hoover 2006; Hjarvard 2016; Lövheim and Hjarvard 2019). Digital religion scholarship has similarly demonstrated that online and offline religious life cannot be treated as entirely separate spheres and has examined how digital media reshape institutional authority, ritual practice, community boundaries, and ecclesiological self-understanding (Campbell 2010; Hutchings 2017; Campbell and Tsuria 2022). Peterson (2020) has consequently called for approaches that move beyond rigid distinctions between religion, media, and culture and attend more closely to the interaction of technological practices, institutional structures, and processes of meaning-making.

Parallel scholarship on artificial intelligence has concentrated on theological anthropology, the imago Dei, personhood, embodiment, relationality, and the distinction between human and machine intelligence (Herzfeld 2002; Dorobantu 2022a, 2022b; Herzfeld and Peters 2023; Dorobantu 2024). Research on AI ethics and algorithmic governance has, in turn, emphasised transparency, accountability, non-discrimination, human rights, and the distribution of technological power (Jobin et al. 2019; Fukuda-Parr and Gibbons 2021). These bodies of scholarship provide essential conceptual resources for analysing recent Catholic interventions on AI, but they have rarely been integrated with the longer history of Catholic media teaching and canonical communication regulation.

Despite these substantial contributions, the long-term development of Catholic teaching on media and technology at the universal level has rarely been reconstructed within a single framework spanning nineteenth-century disputes over press freedom and the canonical regulation of publications through to post-conciliar communication theology, digital transformation, and contemporary reflection on artificial intelligence. Existing studies offer valuable historical overviews and periodisations, but they generally concentrate on twentieth-century social communication, particular pontificates, selected technologies, or documents issued after the Second Vatican Council (Caccamo 2008; Martini 2022; Vitullo et al. 2025). The relationship between juridical forms of communication control, the pastoral and theological appropriation of mass media, the development of digital ecclesial communication, and the recent anthropological and systemic critique of AI therefore remains only partially explored. In particular, the canonical regulation of books and other means of communication has generally been examined within specialised canon-law scholarship rather than integrated into the broader history of Catholic media and technology reflection.

The present article addresses this gap through a broad, purposively selected corpus of major documents and institutional interventions issued at the universal level of the Catholic Church between 1832 and 2026. Its contribution is both historical–systematic and juridical–institutional. Historically, it reconstructs the development of Catholic media and technology reflection across three heuristic phases and examines how regulatory, pastoral, dialogical, and anthropological modes of engagement emerge, overlap, and change over time. From a juridical–institutional perspective, the article does not treat the selected texts as equivalent expressions of an undifferentiated ecclesial voice. Instead, it distinguishes their genre, issuing authority, normative status, intended addressees, and modes of intervention. This distinction is particularly important for comparing three recent and institutionally distinct Catholic interventions concerning AI: the Rome Call for AI Ethics, a non-magisterial multi-stakeholder initiative; Antiqua et nova, a jointly issued dicastery note approved by the pope; and Magnifica humanitas, a papal encyclical situated within the tradition of Catholic social teaching.

Against this background, the article addresses three interrelated research questions. First, how has Catholic teaching at the universal level responded to changing media and communication technologies since the nineteenth century? Second, which institutional, theological–anthropological, thematic, and normative transformations can be identified across the selected documents? Third, to what extent can an anthropological continuity be identified across the historical phases, and how has the conceptual vocabulary through which this concern is expressed changed over time?

To answer these questions, the article proposes a three-phase periodisation. A first phase, extending approximately from Mirari vos to the Second Vatican Council, is characterised by defensive regulation, moral vigilance, and the gradual construction of Catholic media institutions. A second phase, beginning with Inter mirifica in 1963 and extending into the digital transformation of the early twenty-first century, is marked by pastoral appropriation, dialogue, institutional media engagement, and the recognition of communication as a constitutive dimension of ecclesial life. A third phase, emerging around 2020, is characterised by an anthropological deepening and an expanding critique of the social, political, economic, and civilisational structures associated with artificial intelligence. The Rome Call for AI Ethics and Fratelli tutti may be understood as transitional expressions of this development, in which earlier concerns about communication and social order become increasingly connected with algorithmic power, digital governance, and the protection of human agency. The three phases are not understood as mutually exclusive stages in a linear progression. Rather, they identify dominant modes of reflection, while regulatory, instrumental, pastoral, dialogical, and anthropological approaches continue to coexist and overlap.

The article therefore does not posit an unchanged doctrine of human dignity extending uniformly across the entire period. Instead, it identifies a developing anthropological concern whose vocabulary, theological grounding, and normative function change considerably over time. In the earlier documents, this concern is articulated primarily through the categories of truth, moral order, human vulnerability, ecclesial responsibility, and the salvation of souls. After the Second Vatican Council, it is increasingly expressed through communication as communion, participation, rights, the common good, and the explicit language of the dignity of the human person. In the contemporary AI documents, these earlier concerns are reformulated as a systematic defence of human agency, embodiment, relationality, moral judgement, and social justice within technologically structured environments. The continuity identified in this article is therefore neither terminological nor doctrinally static; it consists in the recurring subordination of communication and technology to an evolving Catholic understanding of the human person and the conditions of integral human flourishing.

The article is structured as follows. Section 2 presents the materials and methods, clarifying the source corpus, selection criteria, methodological approach, and analytical framework. Section 3 reconstructs the historical development of Catholic media and technology reflection, from pre-conciliar regulation and institutional media-building to post-conciliar social communication, digital transformation, and recent interventions concerning artificial intelligence. Section 4 comparatively discusses the principal continuities, tensions, and transformations identified in the analysis. Section 5 summarises the main findings and outlines areas for further research.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Methodological Approach

This study combines historical–hermeneutical reconstruction, comparative qualitative document analysis, and a juridical–institutional reading of Catholic texts on media, communication, and technology. The historical–hermeneutical dimension situates each document within its ecclesial, political, legal, and technological context and examines how Catholic responses developed across changing media environments. The comparative dimension identifies recurring concepts, normative orientations, and institutional patterns, while also attending to significant differences between the selected texts. The juridical–institutional dimension distinguishes the documents according to their genre, issuing authority, normative status, intended addressees, and mode of intervention.

Qualitative document analysis treats documents not merely as repositories of information but as institutionally situated texts whose production, authority, audience, and use contribute to their meaning (Prior 2003; Bowen 2009). This approach is particularly appropriate for a corpus comprising papal encyclicals and messages, conciliar documents, universal canonical legislation, pastoral instructions, dicastery texts, administrative acts, and non-magisterial governance initiatives. Rather than treating these materials as equivalent expressions of an undifferentiated ecclesial position, the analysis considers how differences in authority, legal effect, audience, and institutional purpose shape their language, argumentation, and normative claims.

The juridical–institutional component also draws on doctrinal legal research, which identifies, interprets, and systematically relates normative materials by attending to their sources, authority, internal relationships, institutional context, and analytical objectives (Hutchinson and Duncan 2012; Kestemont 2018). This method is applied particularly to universal canonical legislation, administrative acts, and texts concerning ecclesiastical competence and oversight. It is not used to reduce theological or pastoral documents to legal sources, but to clarify the distinct forms of authority and normativity represented within the corpus.

The study does not employ discourse analysis in the sense of a formal linguistic, sociological, or computational coding procedure. Instead, it undertakes a qualitative and historically contextualised interpretation of normative and theological documents. Particular attention is paid to explicit statements concerning media and technology, underlying conceptions of ecclesial authority and the human person, forms of normative reasoning, and changes in the relationship between regulation, pastoral appropriation, dialogue, governance, and systemic critique.

2.2. Corpus and Selection Criteria

The study draws on two interconnected corpora. The first is a diachronic historical corpus consisting of selected Catholic documents and institutional interventions issued at the universal level between 1832 and 2026. In this article, “universal level” refers to texts issued by the pope, an ecumenical council, institutions of the Roman Curia, or other central institutions acting within the organisational framework of the Holy See. The category includes both magisterial and non-magisterial texts, as well as universally binding canonical legislation.

The historical corpus was selected purposively rather than exhaustively. Documents were included when they fulfilled one or more of the following criteria: first, they addressed media, communication, information technologies, or artificial intelligence in a substantial manner; second, they introduced or consolidated a significant institutional or normative development; third, they marked a change in the Church’s understanding or use of a particular medium; fourth, they exercised a discernible influence on subsequent Catholic media or technology reflection; or fifth, they were particularly relevant to the construction of the three-phase periodisation proposed in this article.

The corpus therefore includes texts concerned directly with press freedom, book control, film, broadcasting, social communications, the internet, social media, and artificial intelligence. It also includes selected documents of Catholic social teaching where technological developments are interpreted in relation to labour, globalisation, political power, human dignity, or the common good. The principal documents used to construct the historical periodisation, together with their year, issuing authority, and normative status, are listed in Appendix A.

Within this broader historical corpus, this set of AI-related documents forms a more narrowly defined comparative corpus for closer analysis. Particular comparative attention is devoted to the Rome Call, Antiqua et nova, and Magnifica humanitas because they represent three institutionally distinct forms of Catholic engagement with artificial intelligence: a non-magisterial multi-stakeholder initiative, a jointly issued dicastery note approved by the pope, and a papal encyclical. The two papal messages of 2024 are treated as transitional interventions that connect the governance-oriented approach of the Rome Call with the more explicitly anthropological and social-teaching approaches of the later documents.

2.3. Analytical Framework

The selected documents are examined through four analytical dimensions derived from the research questions and refined through iterative comparison of the sources.

The first dimension concerns institutional context and document character. It asks who issued the document, which institutional competence was exercised, what genre the text belongs to, which authority it claims, whom it addresses, and whether its primary function is doctrinal, legislative, pastoral, administrative, ethical, or governance-oriented. This dimension is particularly important because the normative force of a universal code of canon law differs fundamentally from that of a pastoral instruction, papal message, dicastery note, or voluntary multi-stakeholder declaration.

The second dimension concerns theological–anthropological foundations. It examines the underlying understanding of the human person through which media and technology are evaluated. Relevant concepts include creation, the imago Dei, human dignity, reason, freedom, embodiment, relationality, moral responsibility, vulnerability, work, community, and integral human development. This dimension also considers how the documents conceptualise technology: for example, as an instrument, a gift, a cultural environment, an institutional structure, a form of power, or an anthropological challenge.

The third dimension concerns thematic emphases and normative orientations. Thematic emphases identify the principal fields addressed by each document, such as press freedom, censorship, evangelisation, media education, public opinion, digital participation, labour, surveillance, misinformation, automated weapons, or algorithmic governance. Normative orientations refer to the principles, duties, prohibitions, rights, institutional responsibilities, and regulatory expectations derived from the document’s theological, anthropological, or social analysis. The distinction is therefore between the questions a document addresses and the normative conclusions it draws from them.

The fourth dimension concerns the relationship to Catholic media and social teaching. It examines how each document receives, modifies, or departs from earlier texts and whether it continues or transforms established patterns of argumentation. This includes the relationship between publication control and freedom of communication, between media use and communication as communion, between pastoral appropriation and digital participation, and between individual media ethics and systemic criticism of technological power.

The same four dimensions are applied to the recent AI-related corpus in order to ensure comparability. They also structure the individual analyses in Section 3.4. The framework was not imposed as a rigid coding scheme. Rather, it was developed through an iterative movement between the research questions, the institutional characteristics of the sources, and recurring themes identified during close reading.

2.4. Construction of the Historical Periodisation

The three-phase periodisation was developed through comparative analysis of changes in four principal areas: the Church’s institutional posture toward media and technology; the dominant normative mode of intervention; the conception of media or technology underlying the documents; and the anthropological vocabulary through which technological developments are evaluated.

The first phase is characterised by the predominance of defensive regulation, moral vigilance, publication control, and the simultaneous construction of Catholic media institutions. The second phase is marked by pastoral appropriation, dialogue, media education, institutional participation, and the growing recognition of communication as a constitutive dimension of ecclesial and social life. The third phase is characterised by an anthropological deepening and by an expanding concern with the political, economic, juridical, and civilisational structures associated with artificial intelligence.

Within the first phase, Mirari vos (1832) marks the analytical starting point, and the Syllabus errorum (1864) consolidates its defensive orientation toward liberal conceptions of expression and publicity. The 1917 Code of Canon Law (cc. 1384–1405) then gives this orientation juridical form through its consolidation of publication control, while Divini illius magistri (1929) extends ecclesiastical supervision from print to the newer mass media of cinema and radio. Vigilanti cura (1936) combines this regulatory stance with active institutional participation in the film industry, and Miranda prorsus (1957) represents the culmination of the pre-conciliar approach by treating film, radio, and television systematically within a single document. Inter mirifica (1963) then marks the threshold between the first and second phases, carrying elements of regulation forward while opening the Council’s turn toward pastoral engagement.

The second phase begins with Integrae servandae (1965), which inaugurates a more differentiated model of post-conciliar doctrinal oversight, and the 1966 Notification concerning the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which transforms rather than abolishes publication control. Communio et progressio (1971) provides this phase with its programmatic foundation, and Evangelii nuntiandi (1975) extends this pastoral appropriation to the Church’s evangelising mission, while Ecclesiae pastorum, issued in the same year, marks the transition to more differentiated doctrinal oversight of publications. The 1983 Code of Canon Law (cc. 822–832) then codifies this post-conciliar model of media and publication law. Catholic engagement with digital communication follows a parallel trajectory: John Paul II’s 1990 message for the World Day of Social Communications marks the initial reception of computer culture, Aetatis novae (1992) adapts existing institutional structures to the emerging digital environment, and the twin documents The Church and Internet and Ethics in Internet (2002) develop, respectively, a digital ecclesiology and an expanded media ethics for online environments. Il rapido sviluppo (2005) consolidates this strategic digital engagement, before Laudato si’ (2015) initiates a transition toward systemic technology critique that Fratelli tutti (2020) carries further, functioning as a transitional document between digital media ethics and the Church’s subsequent critique of artificial intelligence.

The third phase opens institutionally with the Rome Call for AI Ethics (2020). Francis’s two 2024 messages then broaden this engagement: Artificial Intelligence and Peace extends AI ethics into political and social questions, while Artificial Intelligence and the Wisdom of the Heart draws an explicit connection between communication ethics and artificial intelligence. Antiqua et nova (2025) consolidates this development theologically and anthropologically, and Magnifica humanitas (2026) represents its systemic culmination, integrating AI into the wider framework of Catholic social teaching.

The boundaries between these phases are heuristic rather than absolute. The periodisation does not imply a linear development in which one model completely replaces another. Regulatory, instrumental, pastoral, dialogical, and anthropological approaches continue to coexist. The phases identify dominant orientations and significant shifts in emphasis rather than mutually exclusive historical blocks. Documents located near the proposed boundaries, including Inter mirifica and Fratelli tutti, are therefore partly interpreted as transitional texts.

2.5. Scope and Limitations

The article does not offer an exhaustive account of every Catholic statement on media, communication, or technology between 1832 and 2026. Its corpus is deliberately selective and oriented toward documents that are institutionally significant, historically influential, or analytically relevant to the proposed periodisation. The selection necessarily privileges formal documents issued at the universal level and does not systematically reconstruct informal interventions, speeches, interviews, or the broader internal processes through which particular texts were produced.

This selectivity also extends further back in time. From the earliest Christian communities, letters enabled doctrine, discipline, and claims to apostolic or episcopal authority to circulate across geographical distance. The prominence of letters within the New Testament, and the subsequent development of episcopal and papal correspondence, show that written communication did more than connect existing communities: it helped constitute a translocal Church (Holmes 2007; Baumkamp 2014; Lieu 2016; d’Avray 2017; 1 Clem. 42.1–4). During the Middle Ages, the relationship between textual transmission and ecclesial normativity became increasingly institutionalised. Manuscript collections and legal compilations—most notably Gratian’s Decretum—did not simply preserve inherited norms but selected, reorganised, reconciled, and rendered them available for teaching and juridical practice. The material circulation of texts thus became an important condition of canonical order (Thier 2019; Winroth 2021; Pulte 2022). The introduction of printing further transformed both the scale and the contestability of religious communication. Catholic bishops had already employed the new technology for liturgical and institutional reform before the Reformation. During the sixteenth century, however, print facilitated the emergence of competing confessional publics and challenged established forms of Catholic control over theological communication in several European territories (Wohlfeil 1984; Pettegree 2005; Nowakowska 2011). The Catholic response combined restriction with active appropriation. The Fifth Lateran Council’s decree on the printing of books in 1515 and the Council of Trent’s regulation of the edition and use of Scripture in 1546 institutionalised mechanisms of ecclesiastical oversight, while authorised catechisms, liturgical books, and other publications made print an instrument of doctrinal consolidation and Catholic reform (Cassar 1990; Tanner 1990). These developments form an indispensable prehistory of Catholic engagement with communication media; their systematic analysis, however, lies beyond the scope of the present study, which accordingly begins its analysis with Mirari vos in 1832.

The study also focuses on normative and institutional discourse rather than on the practical implementation of Catholic media teaching. It does not systematically analyse how the selected documents were received by episcopal conferences, dioceses, religious orders, Catholic media organisations, theologians, or local communities. Nor does it assess whether institutional media practices consistently corresponded to the principles articulated in official documents.

Finally, the article does not claim that the three historical phases exhaust all possible interpretations of Catholic engagement with media and technology. The periodisation is an analytical model designed to make dominant continuities and transformations visible. Alternative periodisations may emerge from studies centred on local reception, media practice, gender, colonial contexts, political geography, or particular technologies. These limitations define the scope of the present study and indicate areas for further research.

3. Historical Development and Systematic Transformation of Catholic Media Reflection

3.1. Church Media Policy Before the Second Vatican Council

3.1.1. Defensive Control and Institutional Media-Building in the Nineteenth Century

In the nineteenth century, the Church’s magisterium regarded press freedom with considerable reserve. The Catholic Church viewed the uncontrolled dissemination of opinions and information as a potential threat to the unity of the faith and to social order. This stance was most clearly evident in the encyclical Mirari vos (1832) of Pope Gregory XVI, in which press freedom was condemned as “dangerous.” This perspective was embedded in a broader distrust of the liberal ideas that had been spreading across Europe since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, increasingly calling the authority of the Church into question (Kraleva 2010, p. 1).

At the same time, the Vatican recognised the growing importance of mass media in shaping public opinion and began to develop a distinct institutional media presence. In 1850, the journal La Civiltà Cattolica was founded and became an important intellectual forum associated with the Catholic Church, particularly in the defence of Church teaching and engagement with modern liberalism (Schlott 2008). The foundation of L’Osservatore Romano under Pius IX on 1 July 1861 marked a further step in the institutionalisation of the Vatican’s media presence (Hansche 1970, pp. 13–16). Through these initiatives, the Church sought to respond to media coverage, participate actively in public discourse, and create a distinctively Catholic communicative space.

Despite these institutional steps, the magisterium’s position on press freedom remained dismissive throughout the nineteenth century. Pope Pius IX emphasised in the Syllabus errorum (1864) that unrestricted freedom of expression through the press was incompatible with Church moral teaching. In the wake of these developments, a dichotomy emerged within Catholic journalism between the “good press” and the “bad press”: Catholic newspapers and periodicals were promoted as bearers of truth, while liberal and secular publications were considered threats to the Catholic faith and social order (Schmolke 2017, p. 95). A first shift in direction was initiated only under the pontificate of Leo XIII, who was the first pope whose voice was recorded and, in 1896, the first to be filmed in a private setting, cautiously introducing the Church to the new communications media (Schlott 2008).

3.1.2. Institutional Expansion and Normative Intensification in the Early Twentieth Century

Alongside the expansion of Catholic media institutions, the Church consolidated its juridical supervision of printed communication through the 1917 Code of Canon Law. The Code brought inherited mechanisms of prior censorship, ecclesiastical authorisation, book prohibition, and penal enforcement together within a unified canonical framework (cc. 1384–1405 CIC/1917). The Index Librorum Prohibitorum remained the most visible instrument of this system, although the Code also prohibited entire categories of writings independently of their individual inclusion in the Index. The codification thus reinforced a model in which the protection of faith and morals was closely connected with hierarchical control over Catholic publication and reading practices (Peters 2001; Cadegan 2013; Vose 2022).

This juridical consolidation was accompanied by the further development of the Vatican’s institutional publishing and communications infrastructure. With the establishment of the Libreria Editrice Vaticana in 1926, the Vatican obtained an institution dedicated to publishing and distributing Church documents and thereby expanded its publishing infrastructure (Gemmingen 2014b, pp. 63, 64).

In the encyclical Divini illius magistri (1929), Pope Pius XI addressed the Christian education of young people and devoted particular attention to modern media in nos. 89 to 93. He warned against the influence of content remote from the faith and morally questionable material disseminated through written works, cinema, and radio, and called simultaneously for the provision of morally valuable alternatives. These programmatic statements laid the groundwork for institutionalised measures, including the support of Catholic film productions and the establishment of media self-regulation within Church circles.

With the founding of Radio Vaticana in 1931, the Holy See possessed for the first time its own medium capable of broadcasting its communications without temporal delay and across national borders (Gemmingen 2014a, p. 267). Further institutional steps followed in 1939 with the establishment of the Press Office of the Holy See, which functioned as a news and information agency, coordinating official communications and contacts with journalists and international media (Gemmingen 2011, pp. 346, 347).

Pope Pius XI engaged intensively with the growing significance of film as a mass medium in the encyclical Vigilanti cura (1936). He called upon the bishops to engage actively with the film industry, seeing in this one of the “most urgent tasks of our time.” He particularly addressed the bishops of the United States, who bore a special responsibility in a country with a flourishing film industry and the growing cultural influence of Hollywood.

In his address (1950) to participants of the International Congress of Catholic Journalists, Pope Pius XII emphasised the central role of the Catholic press in forming healthy public opinion in the service of truth, justice, and peace. He warned against the dangers of manipulation, regimentation, and totalitarian tendencies that suppress freedom of opinion and plunge society into moral confusion, and saw the Catholic press as a bulwark against the decay of opinion formation.

The increasing dissemination of radio, television, and film in the mid-twentieth century prompted the Church’s magisterium to substantially develop its position on mediated communication. In the encyclical Miranda prorsus (1957), Pope Pius XII devoted extensive attention to the significance and responsibility of these new media. He acknowledged the potential of modern technological achievements and described them as “gifts of God” that could lead either “into the realm of light” or “into the darkness.” Alongside the Church’s responsibility, Pius XII also emphasised the role of the state: it was, he insisted, a “gravely binding” duty of the state to uphold public morality and enact appropriate regulations in the interest of the common good.

These developments demonstrate that the Catholic Church adopted an ambivalent attitude toward the mass media throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: on the one hand, the press, film, and broadcasting were regarded as potential dangers to the unity of the faith and public morality; on the other hand, the magisterium increasingly recognised the necessity of actively entering the mediated discourse. This tension intensified considerably in the second half of the twentieth century, particularly as the rapid spread of television brought new challenges, and was ultimately reflected in the deliberations and resolutions of the Second Vatican Council.

3.2. The Teaching on Social Communications After the Second Vatican Council

The Second Vatican Council transformed not only the Church’s self-understanding in ecclesiological terms but also inaugurated a change in the Church’s engagement with modern communications media.

3.2.1. Inter Mirifica (1963): The Conciliar Decree as Point of Departure

As early as 5 June 1960, a preparatory group was established with the creation of the Secretariat for Social Communications, tasked with presenting the Council with a schema on the Church and journalism. In this context, the concept of “social communications media” entered Catholic terminology and established itself as a defining element of Catholic media work and Church teaching (Schmidt 1998, p. 27). This terminological choice emphasised the social relevance of mediated communication but simultaneously led to a certain distancing of Church media teaching from established media and communication studies discourses (Hahn 2020).

The Second Vatican Council adopted the decree Inter mirifica (IM) on 4 December 1963. Although the document has frequently been criticised as outdated and professionally inadequate—particularly for failing to do justice either to the theological or to the media studies discourses of its time (Rolfes 2004, pp. 227–29)—its historical significance remains undeniable. The document affirms that the Church recognises the potential of social communications media such as the press, film, radio, and television, as these can exercise a profound influence on society (no. 1 IM), and derives from this the obligation to employ them actively for the proclamation of the Gospel.

Furthermore, the Church affirms in Inter mirifica its “native right” to possess and use social communications media in order to promote Christian education and secure the salvation of souls (no. 3 IM). This framing carries clerical traits, particularly in its subordinate treatment of the laity’s role (Schmidthüs 2014, p. 118). The recognition of this right did not, however, automatically entail the establishment of comprehensive Catholic television or broadcasting institutions; rather, it implied the necessity of adapting Church media presence to the concrete social, legal, and technical conditions in each case (Kraemer 2018, p. 2).

The Council further emphasised the responsibility of both users and producers of social communications media (nos. 9–11 IM) and called on the state to guarantee the “true and lawful freedom of information” while also taking measures to protect society from potentially harmful content (no. 12 IM). Inter mirifica also urgently called upon the Church to guide its members toward active and responsible use of social communications media and to actively promote the production of press, radio, and television programming conveying a Christian perspective (nos. 14–15 IM).

The document’s limited theological elaboration, its insufficient engagement with contemporary media and communication studies, and its predominantly clerical framing—together with the Council’s own call for further pastoral elaboration in no. 23 IM—created the need for a more comprehensive treatment of communication. This was subsequently provided by Communio et progressio.

3.2.2. Communio et Progressio and the Institutional Consolidation of Post-Conciliar Media Teaching

No. 23 IM emphasises the need for further pastoral elaboration of the Council’s principles and directives. To this end, the Council foresaw the publication of a pastoral instruction, the drafting of which was entrusted to the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications. Within this framework, the Pastoral Instruction Communio et progressio (CP) was published in 1971. On account of its comprehensive approach, Communio et progressio is regarded as the “Magna Charta” of all Church media matters (Wagner 2009, p. 1284).

Communio et progressio identifies the promotion of “the unity and advancement of human society” as the supreme goal of social communications media (no. 1 CP) and anchors this goal in a Christian understanding of communication in which authentic communication creates communion (no. 8 CP). Christ appears as the “supreme communicator” (no. 11 CP), whose earthly ministry exemplifies the normative form of successful communication; the media are accordingly understood as instruments of divine providence contributing to communio and social progress (no. 12 CP) (Jakobi and Kuhn 2009, p. 40). Through this theological grounding, the document creates a distinctive approach to the significance of communication and communications media in the ecclesial context (Rees 2003, p. 265).

The Pastoral Instruction places particular weight on the Church’s promotion of comprehensive media education (nos. 64–70, 107, 110 CP) and on the adjustment of priestly formation (no. 111 CP). A significant shift in this document is its move away from the predominantly defensive posture toward journalism found in earlier Catholic media teaching. The statement in no. 115 CP that the Church as a living organism requires public opinion growing from the dialogue of its members constitutes a significant paradigm shift (Schmolke 2018, p. 301). The post-conciliar Church has recognised that, if it wishes to be present in the public sphere, it must be prepared to offer the secular media “full, truthful and accurate information” (no. 123 CP)—a definitive departure from the image of the “fortress Church” (Kraleva 2010, p. 7). As one illustration of this immediate reception at the national level—not a systematic analysis of national reception, but evidence of how the principles of Communio et progressio could be translated into concrete institutional measures—the German Bishops’ Conference presented an action programme comprising six principal measures: the establishment of a department for journalism, the improvement of Church press offices, the creation of a documentation centre, the expansion of the Catholic News Agency, the promotion of the Church press, and the strengthening of publishing partnerships and journalistic training (Hammerschmidt 1975, p. 215).

The conciliar approach was also institutionalised through the World Day of Social Communications, established in accordance with Inter mirifica, no. 18, and first observed in 1967. The annual papal messages associated with this observance enabled emerging developments in journalism, broadcasting, digital media, and communication ethics to become subjects of continuing ecclesial reflection. The World Day of Social Communications thus provided a recurring institutional framework through which the Church could relate the general principles of conciliar media teaching to changing technological and social conditions.

This pastoral appropriation of modern media was further developed in Evangelii nuntiandi (1975). Paul VI described the media as a “modern and effective version of the pulpit” and warned that the Church would become “guilty before its Lord” if it failed to employ them in the service of evangelisation (Paul VI 1975, no. 45). Modern communications media were therefore no longer treated merely as optional auxiliary instruments. They increasingly became integral to the Church’s understanding of its missionary mandate, supplementing and extending traditional forms of proclamation.

3.2.3. From Comprehensive Book Control to Differentiated Doctrinal Oversight

The transformation initiated around the Second Vatican Council becomes particularly visible in the law governing books and other publications. The 1917 Code had incorporated ecclesiastical book control into a comprehensive canonical system of prior censorship and prohibition that remained substantially in force until the post-conciliar reforms (Steinhauer 2004, p. 153). Canon 1384 CIC/1917 asserted the Church’s right both to prevent the faithful from publishing books that had not undergone prior ecclesiastical examination and to prohibit already published works for a just cause; the same norms extended, unless otherwise provided, to newspapers, periodicals, and other printed writings. Canon 1385 § 1 prohibited the publication—even by lay authors—of Scripture editions and commentaries, works concerning theology, canon law, Church history, religious or moral disciplines, devotional literature, and writings of particular relevance to religion or morality unless ecclesiastical censorship had first taken place. The censor’s favourable judgement certified that the work contained nothing contrary to Catholic doctrine on faith and morals, while the competent ordinary granted the formal permission to publish, conventionally expressed through the imprimatur (Jone 1940, p. 498; Ritter and Bour 2009; CIC/1917, cc. 1385, 1393–1394). Clerics and religious were subject to additional restrictions: under c. 1386 § 1 CIC/1917, even the publication of works on secular subjects and participation in the editing of newspapers or periodicals required the consent of the competent ecclesiastical superior. This legal architecture reflected a model in which the safeguarding of doctrine was pursued principally through broad pre-publication control, hierarchical authorization, and the possibility of subsequent prohibition.

The post-conciliar reform did not abolish ecclesiastical responsibility for publications; rather, it substantially reconfigured its institutional form and underlying rationale. Paul VI’s motu proprio Integrae servandae of 7 December 1965 transformed the Holy Office into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and placed greater emphasis on the promotion of sound doctrine, scholarly inquiry, dialogue with authors, and correction before condemnation; when examining a reported book, the Congregation was henceforth expressly required to hear the author and allow a written defence (Integrae servandae, nos. 4–5). The Notification of 14 June 1966 subsequently deprived the Index Librorum Prohibitorum of its force as ecclesiastical law and of the censures attached to it, while retaining its significance as a moral warning and explicitly appealing to the mature conscience of the faithful, authors, publishers, ordinaries, and episcopal conferences. This transition was therefore not a movement from control to complete deregulation, but a shift from a universal catalogue of prohibited works and broadly framed prior censorship toward differentiated supervision, selective authorisation requirements, and greater personal and episcopal responsibility. The decree Ecclesiae pastorum of 1975 anticipated the structure later codified in cc. 822–832 CIC/1983: ecclesiastical approval remained mandatory for defined categories such as editions and translations of Scripture, liturgical books, prayer books, and catechisms, while it was recommended or required in specific institutional contexts for works concerning theology, canon law, Church history, religion, and morals. The current Code accordingly preserves the pastors’ right and duty to require the prior examination of writings touching faith or morals and to condemn harmful publications (c. 823 CIC/1983), but situates this authority within the broader title “The Means of Social Communication and Books in Particular.” The shift at the conciliar threshold therefore lay not in the disappearance of doctrinal vigilance, but in its transformation from a predominantly prohibitive system into a more differentiated model combining preventive review, authorial responsibility, pastoral correction, and subsequent ecclesiastical judgement.

3.2.4. Interim Assessment: Dialogue, Participation, and Continuing Doctrinal Oversight

The post-conciliar period introduced a substantial change in the dominant orientation of Catholic reflection on media and communication. Whereas earlier approaches had placed particular emphasis on moral vigilance, publication control, and the protection of the faithful from harmful content, Inter mirifica and especially Communio et progressio increasingly presented communication as a field of dialogue, participation, education, and pastoral responsibility. Media were no longer understood principally as external instruments to be supervised or employed, but increasingly as social environments affecting the formation of community, public opinion, and ecclesial life.

This development did not, however, amount to the disappearance of doctrinal supervision or ecclesiastical authority over communication. The post-conciliar reforms transformed the form and scope of oversight rather than abolishing it. The termination of the legal force of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the reform of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the more differentiated provisions of Ecclesiae pastorum and the CIC/1983 shifted responsibility away from a comprehensive system of prohibition toward selective prior review, episcopal responsibility, authorial accountability, pastoral correction, and subsequent doctrinal assessment.

Catholic media teaching in this period was therefore shaped by the coexistence of several normative orientations. The Church encouraged active participation in the mediated public sphere, the development of professional communications institutions, the formation of journalists and media users, and the provision of accurate information. It nonetheless maintained that freedom of communication remained connected with truth, moral responsibility, the common good, and the protection of faith and morals.

The post-conciliar transformation is therefore best understood not as a simple move from control to dialogue, but as a reconfiguration of the relationship between authority, participation, and responsibility. Dialogue and public communication acquired greater theological and pastoral significance, while doctrinal oversight continued in more differentiated legal and institutional forms. This combination of openness, pastoral appropriation, and continuing supervision established the framework within which the Church later addressed computer networks, the internet, social media, and digital communication.

3.3. Catholic Positions on Digital Transformation

3.3.1. Early Reception: From Dives in Misericordia to Aetatis Novae

Dives in misericordia (1980) briefly acknowledged the social significance of developments in information processing and communications technologies. The encyclical Laborem exercens (1981) addressed the ambivalent effects of technological progress in the realm of labour: while technologies such as electronics, informatics, and telematics contributed to increased productivity and quality, they could simultaneously displace jobs and impair human creativity. In his message for the 24th World Day of Social Communications (1990), John Paul II underlined the relevance of new computer technologies for the Church’s missionary task and called especially on young people to use these technologies responsibly in the service of justice, human rights, and equitable development.

With the publication of the Pastoral Instruction Aetatis novae (AN) in 1992, the Catholic Church at the universal level took an early position on the opportunities and challenges arising from the growing dissemination of digital communications media. Aetatis novae retains the broadly positive but morally qualified approach of earlier post-conciliar teaching on social communications while adapting it to the emerging environment of computer networks (Rees 2003, p. 266). Its publication was occasioned not only by technological developments but also by the profound political upheavals resulting from the collapse of the Cold War order (Rolfes 2004, pp. 238, 239).

The Instruction diagnoses substantial innovations in the field of communications technology (no. 2 AN) and calls upon both the faithful and Church officials to employ the potentials of the “computer age” creatively in accordance with God’s saving plan (no. 3 AN). The establishment of a dialogical communication culture is understood not only as a means of strengthening Church credibility but as an expression of the communio understanding. The right to information and dialogue enshrined in c. 212 CIC/1983 acquires new relevance in this context (no. 10 AN). The Church indeed sees itself as obligated to employ these technical means; failure to do so could in certain circumstances be judged culpable (no. 11 AN).

In programmatic terms, the document recalls that communication is an integral component of every pastoral plan (no. 17 AN). The appendix addresses itself explicitly to episcopal conferences: “Every diocese and bishops’ conference should therefore develop an integrated pastoral plan for communications” (no. 23 AN), one that should explicitly include modern communications means such as “computer networks” in support of evangelisation (no. 24 AN).

Aetatis novae has nevertheless been criticised. Franz-Josef Eilers argues that the document remains insufficiently attentive to communication as a constitutive dimension of the Church rather than merely as a pastoral function (Eilers 1992, pp. 121, 122). Hermann-Josef Große Kracht offers a stronger critique, describing Aetatis novae as a retreat from the media–pastoral advances of Communio et progressio. In his view, the document revives a pre-modern conception of ecclesial publicity and employs a strongly moralising language. Media are no longer acknowledged in their own communicative logic but are instrumentalised primarily as tools of Church re-evangelisation (Große Kracht 2015, pp. 261, 262). Similarly, Schmolke criticises the formulation “media in service” as a return to a functionalist–instrumentalist understanding that fails to recognise the intrinsic value and self-understanding of mediated communication (Schmolke 2014, p. 251).

3.3.2. The Internet Documents of 2002: The Church and Internet and Ethics in Internet

In 2002, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications published The Church and Internet (CI), which systematically examined the opportunities and challenges presented by the internet for the Catholic Church. The internet is described—continuing a well-established formulation—as a “gift of God” (no. 1 CI).

The document highlights the internet as a unique medium for internal Church communication (no. 6 CI). Its interactive structure dissolves the classical separation between sender and receiver and opens new forms of dialogical participation between pastors and faithful. The right to information and dialogue within the Church enshrined in c. 212 § 2 CIC/1983 thereby acquires new contours (Rees 2003, p. 271).

No. 9 CI, however, states unequivocally the limits of virtual reality with respect to the sacramental life of the Church: virtual reality cannot be a substitute for the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The statement “there are no sacraments on the internet” articulates a fundamental theological limit to the substitution of embodied sacramental participation by virtual presence. Recent scholarship has situated this limit within a broader debate on digital Catholic imagination, mediated ecclesial presence, and the relationship between online participation and embodied sacramental life (Theng 2026).

In the same year, the complementary document Ethics in Internet appeared, in which the Pontifical Council addresses the ethical challenges of digital media. Freedom of expression is highlighted as a fundamental human right and a pillar of democracy (no. 12), while a radical liberalism that elevates freedom to an absolute category is criticised (no. 14).

3.3.3. From Il Rapido Sviluppo to Towards Full Presence: Ethical and Relational Deepening

The Apostolic Letter Il rapido sviluppo (2005) underlines the continuing importance of modern communications media for the Church’s missionary mandate. John Paul II recalls that the Church “would feel guilty before the Lord” if it failed to use these powerful means in the service of the Gospel (John Paul II 2005, no. 2). He also emphasises the need to integrate communications media firmly into pastoral planning rather than leaving their use to isolated individuals or small groups (no. 9).

In Caritas in veritate (2009), Benedict XVI situates the means of social communication within a broader analysis of globalisation and the common good. He stresses that the media can contribute to greater communion and human development, but also warns that they may be subordinated to economic interests, ideological projects, or attempts to impose models of consumption and distorted visions of the human person (Benedict XVI 2009, no. 73). Catholic reflection on digital communication thus increasingly moves beyond questions of pastoral use toward the economic, political, and anthropological structures within which communication takes place.

In Laudato si’ (2015), Francis examines the ambivalence of digital media in the context of ecological, social, and cultural transformation. He observes that digital communication can facilitate access to knowledge and create new forms of encounter, while also contributing to information overload, superficial relationships, social isolation, and the fragmentation of attention (Francis 2015, no. 47). This criticism becomes more pronounced in Fratelli tutti (2020), where Francis analyses social media in relation to polarisation, verbal aggression, the manipulation of information, and the formation of closed digital circles. Digital connectivity, he argues, does not necessarily produce genuine fraternity or meaningful human encounter (Francis 2020, nos. 42–50).

This relational approach was further developed in Towards Full Presence (2023), a pastoral reflection issued by the Dicastery for Communication on Christian engagement with social media. Rather than asking primarily whether the Church should use digital platforms, the document considers how Christians should inhabit them as attentive and responsible neighbours. Drawing on the parable of the Good Samaritan, it interprets digital presence through listening, discernment, encounter, community, and communion. At the same time, it addresses the commercialisation of attention, algorithmic filtering, polarisation, misinformation, and the reduction of users to consumers and data profiles.

Towards Full Presence thus deepens the relational and participatory orientation of post-conciliar Catholic media teaching. It treats social media not merely as instruments of proclamation but as social environments in which Christian witness depends on the quality of relationships and forms of presence established there. In this respect, the document also provides an immediate pastoral background to Francis’s subsequent reflection on the “wisdom of the heart” and fully human communication in the context of artificial intelligence (Dicastery for Communication 2023, nos. 5, 29, 37–45, 50–57).

3.3.4. Interim Assessment: Pastoral Planning, Digital Participation, and Continuing Ambivalence

Recent Catholic documents issued at the universal level increasingly present digital communication as an object of coordinated pastoral planning rather than as a collection of isolated media initiatives. Episcopal conferences and dioceses are encouraged to develop integrated communications strategies and to recognise the participatory character of digital environments. Digital media are therefore understood not only as instruments for transmitting ecclesial content, but also as social environments in which authority, community, dialogue, and Christian witness are negotiated.

This development reflects a gradual movement beyond the classical distinction between sender and receiver. Documents such as Aetatis novae, The Church and Internet, and Towards Full Presence emphasise participation, listening, relational presence, and the responsibility of both institutions and individual users. They thus articulate important normative conditions for a more dialogical communication culture, although their practical implementation remains a separate question (Fecke 2023).

Nonetheless, the Catholic approach to digital transformation remains marked by continuing ambivalence. The Church increasingly presents itself as an active participant in digital public discourse and seeks to contribute to the common good, the protection of human dignity, and the ethical shaping of digital environments. Yet it also maintains clear reservations concerning the substitution of embodied ecclesial and sacramental life by virtual forms of presence. Church documents therefore continue to reveal what Hahn describes as an “uneasy relationship” with digital space, particularly in their conceptual distinctions between communication, presence, community, and sacramentality (Hahn 2020).

This ambivalence is also visible at the juridical level: although the post-conciliar framework places greater emphasis on participation, personal responsibility, and differentiated oversight, ecclesiastical authority over publications and means of social communication remains firmly present in the CIC/1983 (Rees 2021, pp. 205, 206). The digital phase is therefore best understood not as an unrestricted embrace of technological change, but as an attempt to combine pastoral appropriation and relational participation with continuing theological, sacramental, and juridical limits.

3.4. Catholic Teaching at the Universal Level in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Since 2020, Catholic reflection has increasingly turned from media primarily as channels of communication toward artificial intelligence as a set of socio-technical systems that shape decision-making, labour, political power, social relations, and the production of knowledge. This development brings questions of human agency, responsibility, embodiment, and technological power to the centre of Catholic reflection.

The recent AI-related corpus comprises the Rome Call for AI Ethics (2020), the two papal messages on artificial intelligence issued in 2024, Antiqua et nova (2025), and Magnifica humanitas (2026). These texts are not equivalent expressions of a single institutional voice. They include a voluntary multi-stakeholder initiative, papal messages in a pastoral form, a joint dicastery note, and a papal encyclical. Their comparison therefore requires attention both to common themes and to differences in authority, audience, genre, and normative function. The following analysis applies the four dimensions introduced in Section 2.3: institutional context and document character; theological–anthropological foundations; thematic emphases and normative orientations; and the relationship to the wider tradition of Catholic media and social teaching. This comparison across the four dimensions is summarised below (

Table 1. Comparative Overview of the Recent Catholic AI-Related Corpus.

Document	Institutional Form	Anthropological Basis	Principal Themes	Normative Mode
Rome Call for AI Ethics (2020)	Voluntary multi-stakeholder declaration initiated by the Pontifical Academy for Life in cooperation with governmental, international, and corporate actors	Universal human dignity, human rights, and human-centred ethics	Transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality, reliability, security and privacy, education, and rights	Voluntary governance commitments and ethics-by-design principles
Francis’s messages on AI, peace, and communication (2024)	Two papal pastoral messages issued for the World Day of Peace and the World Day of Social Communications	Imago Dei, relational and morally responsible human intelligence, creaturely limitation, and the wisdom of the heart	Peace, labour, inequality, automated weapons, communication, journalism, synthetic content, human oversight, and international cooperation	Pastoral and political–ethical orientation, including calls for meaningful human control and binding multilateral governance
Antiqua et nova (2025)	Joint note of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education, approved by the pope and authorised for publication	Embodied, relational, truth-oriented, and morally responsible human intelligence, distinguished from computational functionality	Human–machine distinction, moral agency, relationships, labour, healthcare, education, misinformation, surveillance, ecology, warfare, and the relationship with God	Doctrinal–pastoral guidance centred on human responsibility, transparency, oversight, and the common good
Magnifica humanitas (2026)	Papal encyclical situated within the tradition of Catholic social teaching	Trinitarian and Christological anthropology, inherent human dignity, relationality, and the principles of Catholic social teaching	Technocratic power, economic concentration, communication, labour and automation, freedom, algorithmic dependence, warfare, peace, and multilateral governance	Systemic social, political, and ethical orientation emphasizing public responsibility, regulation, institutional accountability, and the common good

Note: The table summarises the dominant characteristics of each intervention. The categories are analytical and do not imply that the documents are equivalent in authority, genre, audience, or normative effect.

).

3.4.1. Rome Call for AI Ethics (2020)

• Institutional Context and Character

The Rome Call for AI Ethics (RCAI) was signed in Rome on 28 February 2020 at the conclusion of the congress “RenAIssance: For a Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence.” Its original signatories were the Pontifical Academy for Life, Microsoft, IBM, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the Italian Government, represented by the Minister for Technological Innovation (Pontifical Academy for Life 2020).

The document is neither a papal nor a dicastery text, and it does not constitute an exercise of the Catholic Church’s magisterial authority. The Pontifical Academy for Life described it as a document of shared commitments developed with public institutions, an international organisation, and private technology companies. It creates no binding ecclesiastical or state law, but formulates voluntary principles and invites governments, companies, international organisations, educational institutions, and other stakeholders to support and implement them.

The Rome Call therefore represents a distinctive institutional form of Catholic engagement with technology. Unlike magisterial texts addressed primarily to bishops, clergy, or the faithful, it was developed within a multi-stakeholder setting and directed toward a pluralistic global audience. Its authority rests less on hierarchical promulgation than on public commitment, institutional cooperation, and the capacity to establish shared principles across religious and organisational boundaries. This setting also explains its limited use of explicitly theological language. Human rights, technological responsibility, education, and governance provide the principal vocabulary through which the Pontifical Academy for Life participates as a convener and normative contributor in a transnational debate. The Academy does not appear as the exclusive teacher or regulator of the other participants, but as one actor seeking common ethical ground with institutions that possess technological, political, or economic power. This approach expands the range of actors addressed by Catholic technology ethics, but it also makes the initiative dependent on continued voluntary cooperation and on the willingness of powerful institutions to accept scrutiny beyond public endorsement.

2.

Theological–Anthropological Foundations

The theological foundations of the RCAI remain largely implicit. Rather than grounding dignity directly in creation or the imago Dei, the document begins from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially the equality of all persons in dignity and rights and the prohibition of discrimination. This enables the initiative to establish normative common ground among religious, governmental, international, and corporate actors. The choice is institutionally significant: the Academy does not require other signatories to adopt a specifically Catholic account of the human person before entering a shared ethical commitment. The human-rights vocabulary nonetheless allows concerns central to Catholic social teaching to be expressed in a form suitable for cooperation across traditions.

Its underlying anthropology is nevertheless human-centred. AI is understood as a product of human creativity that must remain ordered toward the good of persons, humanity as a whole, and the natural environment. Technological development is not treated as an autonomous process with its own moral legitimacy. Its ethical value depends on whether it supports human beings, protects vulnerable persons, expands freedom, and respects inherent dignity.

The document’s reference to the planet as humanity’s “common and shared home” also connects it with the integral ecological perspective of Laudato si’. AI ethics is thus situated within an understanding of the interdependence of human beings, institutions, technological systems, and the natural environment. The Rome Call translates concerns compatible with Catholic anthropology and social teaching into a vocabulary accessible beyond explicitly ecclesial contexts.

3.

Thematic Emphases and Normative Orientations

The document is organised around ethics, education, and rights and concludes with six principles: transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality, reliability, and security and privacy. Transparency requires explainable and understandable systems. Inclusion demands that technological development take account of all persons, especially those at risk of exclusion. Responsibility requires identifiable human actors to remain accountable for design and deployment. Impartiality concerns discrimination and bias; reliability concerns dependable functioning; and security and privacy require the protection of systems, data, and users.

These principles are gathered under the concept of “algor-ethics,” which expresses the demand that ethical considerations be incorporated into algorithmic systems from conception and design through deployment and use. Ethics should not operate merely as a retrospective correction after a technology has been introduced.

The educational dimension extends beyond digital skills. It calls for interdisciplinary formation capable of developing critical awareness of the social and ethical consequences of AI and of connecting technical knowledge with the humanities and social sciences. Education should enable persons to understand how algorithmic systems influence opportunities, information, and social participation. Particular attention is directed toward vulnerable persons, intergenerational responsibility, and those at risk of exclusion from technological change. The section on rights likewise recognises that voluntary corporate ethics is not always sufficient. It links technological innovation with the protection of fundamental rights and insists that responsibility remain identifiable throughout the life cycle of an AI system. Although the Rome Call is itself non-binding, it acknowledges the possible need for legal regulation, transparency, traceability, and safeguards for high-risk applications. It is therefore governance-oriented without itself constituting a regulatory act.

4.

Place within the Church’s Teaching and Media Tradition

The Rome Call shifts the principal object of Catholic engagement from the ethical use of communications media toward the design and governance of algorithmic systems. Earlier documents concentrated primarily on the moral use of media, ecclesial participation in public communication, media education, and evangelisation. The Rome Call instead asks how technical systems should be designed and governed so that they respect dignity, rights, inclusion, and responsibility. Its distinctive contribution lies in its cooperative form and in translating Catholic-compatible concerns into shared governance principles. It supplements rather than replaces magisterial and pastoral forms of intervention. Its voluntary character, however, exposes a persistent limitation: agreement on ethical principles does not by itself determine who must implement them, how compliance is assessed, or what consequences follow when institutions disregard their commitments.

3.4.2. Papal Messages on AI, Peace, and Fully Human Communication (2024)

• Institutional Context and Character

In 2024, Francis devoted two annual messages to artificial intelligence: Artificial Intelligence and Peace, prepared for the 57th World Day of Peace, and Artificial Intelligence and the Wisdom of the Heart: Towards a Fully Human Communication, issued for the 58th World Day of Social Communications (Francis 2024a, 2024b). The first belongs to the tradition of papal peace messages and addresses states, governments, religious leaders, civil society, and humanity more broadly. The second is directed more specifically toward communicators, journalists, media institutions, and users of digital technologies.

The messages are authoritative papal interventions in a pastoral form. They are not legislative acts and do not possess the genre, scope, or systematic character of an encyclical. Within the selected AI-related corpus, however, they mark an institutional shift from an Academy-led multi-stakeholder initiative to direct papal teaching. Their accessible language combines explicit Christian anthropology with ethical and political arguments intended for a religiously and culturally diverse audience.

The documents are considered together because they are complementary. Artificial Intelligence and Peace examines AI at the level of social order, labour, weapons, inequality, international law, and political responsibility. Artificial Intelligence and the Wisdom of the Heart concentrates on communication, journalism, synthetic content, platform power, algorithmic selection, and the formation of public opinion. The distinction is not absolute: the Peace Message also addresses data and automated classification, while the Communications Message raises questions of social power, inequality, and institutional responsibility. Together, they connect AI governance with the anthropological conditions of peace and genuinely human communication and show that technical systems cannot be separated from the political and communicative environments in which they operate.

2.

Theological–Anthropological Foundations

Artificial Intelligence and Peace begins from the affirmation that human intelligence is a gift of the Creator and an expression of the dignity of persons created in the image and likeness of God. Intelligence is not an isolated computational capacity but a relational, free, and morally responsible power directed toward cooperation and the development of creation. Science and technology can contribute to peace and integral human development only when ordered toward the common good (Francis 2024a).

The message accordingly rejects an unqualified identification of artificial and human intelligence. AI systems may imitate particular cognitive functions, but their operations depend on human purposes, institutional contexts, ownership structures, and value-laden decisions. The relevant distinction is not merely between different degrees of computational capacity, but between systems that process data and persons who possess dignity, freedom, moral judgement, relationality, and responsibility. Human beings cannot be reduced to data profiles or algorithmic classifications.

The Communications Message develops this anthropology through the category of the heart. The heart is presented as the locus of freedom, decision, vulnerability, relationship, and encounter with God. The “wisdom of the heart” is therefore not emotion opposed to reason, but the integration of knowledge, experience, moral discernment, and communal responsibility (Francis 2024b). Machines may process and generate data at great scale, but meaning arises within embodied relationships, historical experience, and responsibility toward concrete persons. The danger is consequently not only technical error but a society that becomes rich in technology while becoming poor in humanity.

Taken together, the messages make the anthropological basis of Catholic AI ethics more explicit than the Rome Call. Human dignity is related to creation, the imago Dei, creaturely limitation, relationality, freedom, and the wisdom of the heart. Their account remains less systematic than that of Antiqua et nova, placing them between the universal governance language of the Rome Call and the later dicastery note’s more comprehensive distinction between human and artificial intelligence.

3.

Thematic Emphases and Normative Orientations

Artificial Intelligence and Peace develops a broad social, political, and juridical analysis. It rejects technological neutrality and emphasises that AI systems embody the values, purposes, and interests of those who design, own, and deploy them. The message addresses the extraction and political or commercial use of data, manipulation of behaviour, opaque automated decisions, discrimination, electoral interference, surveillance, digital exclusion, and the concentration of technological advantages among a limited number of actors.

Particular attention is directed toward automated decisions affecting work, credit, asylum, social assistance, and criminal justice. Such decisions concern persons rather than abstract data subjects and therefore require identifiable human and legal responsibility. Algorithms must not determine the meaning of human rights or eliminate compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and the possibility of personal change. Human dignity functions here both as an anthropological foundation and as a limit on data-driven categorisation.

The message also addresses labour, education, and warfare. Automation may remove burdensome tasks but can deepen inequality, weaken job security, and transfer benefits to a small minority. Technological change must therefore be assessed not only by productivity but also by its effects on employment, social participation, and the distribution of opportunities. Education must cultivate critical judgement rather than technical competence alone and should prepare persons to evaluate the information and classifications generated by automated systems. In the military sphere, Francis rejects the attribution of moral responsibility to autonomous systems and demands meaningful and consistent human control over weapons. He is particularly concerned that technological distance may weaken the perception of responsibility for decisions involving human life. Because AI operates across borders, he calls for international cooperation and a binding multilateral framework rather than reliance solely on voluntary guidelines.

The Communications Message narrows the focus to information environments. Generative AI can produce texts, images, and other outputs that appear human while obscuring their origins and conditions of production. The associated risks include disinformation, fabricated or unverified content, the erosion of trust in journalism, reinforced polarisation, echo chambers, the reduction of pluralism, and the subordination of communication to commercial or political interests. The message therefore stresses the traceability of sources, identification of authorship, disclosure of synthetic content, transparency in algorithmic selection, and platform responsibility. It also raises questions concerning unequal access to information, the environmental cost of computational systems, and the emergence of new informational inequalities between those who control advanced technologies and those who remain dependent on them.

The document does not reject AI-assisted communication. AI may support journalism, translation, data analysis, and wider access to information, provided that it does not eliminate reporting based on direct contact with persons and events. Information cannot be separated from embodied relationships, attention to suffering, and responsibility toward those represented. Communicators must remain responsible subjects rather than passive distributors of machine-generated material, while users must become discerning participants rather than objects of algorithmic influence. The message thus preserves a role for technological assistance while rejecting the replacement of professional judgement and interpersonal encounter.

The two messages employ different normative styles. The Peace Message makes more explicit political and juridical demands concerning regulation, oversight, accountability, and human control. The Communications Message proceeds through anthropological criteria, professional duties, and questions directed toward media organisations, platforms, journalists, and users. It asks not only whether information is accurate, but whether communicative practices preserve encounter, plurality, responsibility, and attention to concrete persons. Both messages reject technological determinism: the effects of AI depend on institutional design, political decisions, moral formation, and collective responsibility. Their demands nevertheless remain principally orienting rather than technically prescriptive. They identify goods to be protected and responsibilities to be assumed, while leaving the detailed design of legal standards and enforcement mechanisms to political and professional institutions.

4.

Place within the Church’s Social and Media Tradition

The messages form a bridge between the Rome Call and Antiqua et nova. Artificial Intelligence and Peace receives principles such as transparency, inclusion, responsibility, and security but connects them with papal teaching on peace, international law, and binding governance. The Communications Message reconnects AI with the post-conciliar understanding of communication as community, participation, truth, and relationship. In continuity with Fratelli tutti and Towards Full Presence, it criticises polarisation, manipulation, and the weakening of meaningful encounter; unlike those earlier texts, it addresses an environment in which communicative outputs can be generated, selected, and personalised by artificial systems. Together, the messages move beyond questions of ecclesial media use toward the social infrastructures and anthropological conditions of technologically organised communication.

3.4.3. Antiqua et Nova (2025)

• Institutional Context and Character

Antiqua et nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence (AnN) was jointly issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education on 28 January 2025. Francis approved the Note and authorised its publication.

Institutionally, Antiqua et nova is a joint curial note rather than a papal encyclical, legislative act, or voluntary declaration. Its authority derives from the competence of the two issuing dicasteries and the pope’s approval. The participation of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith situates AI within the Church’s doctrinal responsibility, while the Dicastery for Culture and Education brings questions of science, technology, education, and contemporary culture into the analysis.

The title draws on Matthew 13:52 and signals the intention to bring philosophical and theological tradition into dialogue with technological developments. The Note is addressed especially to those responsible for transmitting the faith, including parents, teachers, pastors, and bishops, but seeks to contribute to a broader public conversation about technology, the human person, and the common good. Unlike the Rome Call, it speaks through the institutional voice of Roman dicasteries and develops an explicitly Christian anthropology.

2.

Theological–Anthropological Foundations

The central argument of Antiqua et nova is that “intelligence” is used in fundamentally different senses when applied to human beings and artificial systems. AI research generally defines intelligence functionally through the successful performance of cognitive tasks. Human intelligence, by contrast, belongs to the person as a whole and cannot be isolated from embodiment, freedom, moral responsibility, relationality, affectivity, historical experience, and openness to truth and transcendence. The Note therefore treats disputes about terminology as anthropologically consequential. Calling a system “intelligent” may be acceptable within a technical context, but becomes misleading when functional performance is taken to imply personal understanding, consciousness, or moral agency.

Drawing on philosophical and theological tradition, the Note distinguishes intellectus, the inward apprehension of truth, from ratio, the discursive movement of reasoning. These are complementary dimensions of an intelligence that permeates the human capacities for knowing, willing, loving, choosing, and acting (AnN, no. 14). Human intelligence is therefore not reducible to logical calculation or technically successful output.

This account is developed through several anthropological dimensions. Human intelligence is embodied: the person is a unity of body and soul whose understanding develops through sensory, emotional, relational, and historically situated experience (AnN, nos. 16–17). It is relational and grows through dialogue, cooperation, and interpersonal communion (nos. 18–20). It is oriented toward truth, goodness, and beauty rather than utility alone (nos. 21–23, 28–29). It is also connected with the human vocation to cultivate creation and exercise technological capacities responsibly (nos. 24–25).

Current AI systems are powerful but limited human products. They process data, recognise patterns, generate outputs, and imitate results associated with cognition, but they do not possess bodily experience, a lived history, moral conscience, authentic relationships, or an intrinsic orientation toward truth and goodness (AnN, nos. 30–33). The Note’s treatment of the Turing Test illustrates this distinction: behavioural equivalence may indicate functional success but does not account for the breadth of human experience, including emotion, creativity, moral judgement, aesthetic perception, and religious openness (nos. 11–12).

The central thesis follows: AI is not an artificial form of human intelligence but a product of human intelligence (AnN, no. 35). This formulation does not deny the technical sophistication of AI but resists language that attributes personal agency or understanding to computational processes. It also protects dignity from functionalist interpretations. A person’s worth does not depend on cognitive capacity, productivity, or technical performance, but derives from the inherent dignity of the person created in the image of God (AnN, no. 34). The argument therefore has implications beyond AI: any social order that measures human value primarily through efficiency, cognitive performance, or economic usefulness rests on an anthropologically inadequate foundation.

3.

Thematic Emphases and Normative Orientations

Antiqua et nova builds its ethical framework on the distinction between human moral agency and mere technological functionality. Only persons possess conscience, prudence, freedom, and responsibility. AI systems may assist decisions, but responsibility must remain with identifiable developers, owners, operators, regulators, and users (AnN, nos. 36–48).

Ethical evaluation cannot be limited to the intended ends of an application. It must also examine the means employed, the institutions within which systems operate, and the conception of the human person embedded in technological design. AI systems are not neutral: they reflect the priorities and worldviews of their developers, owners, users, and regulators and can reproduce existing inequalities and concentrations of power (AnN, nos. 41–42). This broadens moral assessment from individual acts of use to the full socio-technical arrangement in which data are collected, models trained, outputs interpreted, and decisions implemented. Responsibility is consequently distributed across several actors but cannot be dissolved into the system as a whole.

The Note applies this framework to society, relationships, labour, healthcare, education, misinformation, surveillance, ecology, warfare, and the relationship with God (AnN, nos. 49–107). This broad range demonstrates that its anthropological distinction is intended to guide social discernment rather than remain an abstract philosophical claim. Across these fields, several recurring concerns emerge. First, technological and economic power must remain subject to oversight, transparency, legal accountability, justice, and subsidiarity. Concentration of power in a small number of corporations can affect democratic participation, access to knowledge, working conditions, and the distribution of opportunities. The document therefore links individual responsibility with the duties of institutions capable of shaping technological environments at scale.

Second, AI cannot become a person or enter genuinely reciprocal relationships. Anthropomorphising systems risks confusing simulation with interpersonal encounter, particularly in education, childhood, companionship, and intimate relationships. The issue is not merely terminological. Presenting a system as if it possessed understanding, care, or personal intention can alter expectations and make users more vulnerable to manipulation. Users should therefore be informed when they are interacting with an artificial system, and designers should avoid deliberately obscuring the distinction between artificial outputs and personal communication (AnN, nos. 56–63).

Third, labour, healthcare, and education are relational and moral practices, not merely technical functions. AI may assist workers, clinicians, and teachers, but should not displace their personal and professional responsibility. In labour, efficiency must not become the sole criterion by which work is organised or workers evaluated; the document warns against technological unemployment, de-skilling, and workplace surveillance. In healthcare, predictive and diagnostic systems may support treatment but cannot replace the relationship of trust and responsibility between patient and professional. In education, teachers are not merely transmitters of information but relational and moral guides. AI should therefore support rather than erode the formative character of learning.

Fourth, generative AI intensifies problems of misinformation, deepfakes, manipulation, and surveillance. The capacity to generate persuasive but false content affects not only individual deception but the social conditions of trust and public deliberation. Transparency, verification, accountability, and privacy are therefore necessary. The Note is also concerned with extensive data collection and behavioural prediction, particularly where they enable political or commercial actors to classify and influence persons. Individuals must not be reduced to profiles or subjected to opaque forms of control.

Fifth, AI belongs within integral ecological and peace ethics. It can support environmental research, sustainable agriculture, energy management, and disaster response, but its infrastructure also consumes energy, water, and material resources. These costs must be included in the assessment of technological benefits and distributed consequences. In warfare, the Note rejects the delegation of decisions involving human life and death to autonomous systems. Meaningful human control, legal accountability, and moral responsibility must be preserved even where military technologies promise greater speed or precision.

Finally, the Note warns against treating AI as an ultimate source of truth, meaning, salvation, or guidance. Attributing quasi-divine characteristics to a human artefact is interpreted as a contemporary form of idolatry. AI must remain a tool rather than a substitute for relationships, moral discernment, or humanity’s relationship with God.

Across all these fields, the principal criterion remains the dignity and integral development of the human person. AI is ethically legitimate insofar as it supports agency, protects the vulnerable, promotes justice and the common good, preserves authentic relationships, and remains under responsible human direction.

4.

Place within the Church’s Teaching and Media Tradition

Antiqua et nova consolidates the anthropological orientation of Catholic AI reflection. It retains earlier concerns with truth, communication, education, responsibility, and the common good, but reframes them through a systematic distinction between persons and computational systems. Its treatment of embodiment and relationship also develops the insistence of The Church and Internet that virtual interaction cannot replace sacramental and interpersonal presence. Compared with the Rome Call, it adopts a more explicitly theological and philosophical mode of argumentation; compared with the 2024 messages, it systematises their claims about embodiment, relationality, moral judgement, and human responsibility. Its contribution lies in integrating media–ethical and social concerns into an explicitly Christian anthropology without reducing AI to either a pastoral instrument or an object of prohibition. The Note nevertheless remains principally a framework of discernment: its anthropological distinctions must still be translated into sector-specific legal and institutional standards.

3.4.4. Magnifica Humanitas (2026)

• Institutional Context and Character

Magnifica humanitas (MH), the first encyclical of Leo XIV, was signed on 15 May 2026, the 135th anniversary of Rerum novarum, and promulgated on 25 May 2026. Its subtitle, “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” identifies the protection of the human person as its central criterion.

As a papal encyclical situated within Catholic social teaching, Magnifica humanitas differs institutionally from the other documents in the corpus. The Rome Call is a voluntary multi-stakeholder initiative; Francis’s messages are papal interventions in pastoral form; and Antiqua et nova is a joint dicastery note approved by the pope. Magnifica humanitas offers an extended exercise of papal teaching that integrates AI into a systematic reflection on human dignity, work, communication, freedom, political power, peace, and the common good.

The date deliberately relates the document to Rerum novarum. AI and digital transformation are interpreted as contemporary res novae requiring discernment in the light of the Gospel and Catholic social teaching (MH, nos. 3–5, 27–45). The parallel does not identify AI with the nineteenth-century labour question, but establishes methodological continuity: technological change must be examined through its effects on persons, institutions, work, social order, and human dignity.

The encyclical addresses the faithful and the laity in particular, but also political authorities, businesses, universities, educators, and people of goodwill (MH, nos. 2, 23–24, 47). It offers theological foundations, social principles, and criteria for judgement rather than technical prescriptions. The breadth of its audience reflects the conviction that AI cannot be governed by developers or states alone. Universities, professional communities, civil society, religious institutions, and users all participate in shaping the norms and practices through which technological systems acquire social authority. The document also turns Catholic social teaching inward by insisting that the Church examine whether her own structures embody justice, transparency, participation, responsible authority, and attention to victims (MH, nos. 85–89). The credibility of ecclesial intervention therefore depends partly on whether the Church applies the same standards within her own institutional life.

2.

Theological–Anthropological Foundations

Magnifica humanitas begins from the conviction that dignity is received rather than produced. Human beings possess dignity not because of cognitive ability, productivity, wealth, social status, or technological capacity, but because they are created and willed by God. Their value therefore precedes performance and cannot be measured against artificial systems (MH, nos. 48–55).

The encyclical develops an explicitly Trinitarian and Christological anthropology. The human person is created in the image of the Triune God and is fundamentally relational, called to communion with God, others, and creation. In Christ, humanity is revealed as embodied, free, vulnerable, open to others, and capable of self-giving (MH, nos. 48–50). Dignity consequently has a relational and vocational character: the person is not an isolated unit of intelligence but a being whose identity unfolds through communion, responsibility, work, and care.

Two biblical images structure this account. Babel represents technological and political construction governed by pride, uniformity, domination, and self-sufficient power. Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem represents patient and shared construction ordered toward the common good (MH, nos. 1, 6–15, 90). The contrast provides a framework for distinguishing development that instrumentalises persons from development that protects dignity, participation, diversity, and responsibility.

The encyclical also criticises transhumanist and posthumanist narratives that interpret embodiment, vulnerability, dependence, ageing, and finitude primarily as defects to be overcome. It does not reject medicine, assistive technologies, or legitimate forms of enhancement. Its criticism is directed toward the promise that humanity can attain fulfilment through unlimited technological self-transcendence or by treating the body as an obsolete constraint. Human flourishing is not achieved by escaping the human condition but is received through grace and expressed in love, communion, and participation in divine life (MH, nos. 112–130).

The category of the heart unites reason, freedom, affectivity, conscience, desire, and relationship. It prevents intelligence from being reduced to calculation or information processing. The central question is therefore not simply whether AI can perform tasks once reserved for humans, but whether technological development makes human life more humane, just, relational, and worthy (MH, nos. 119–130).

This anthropology is translated into institutional criteria through the principles of the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, and social justice (MH, nos. 46–84). Human dignity is not an abstract value limited to personal conduct; it requires structures that enable participation, distribute benefits fairly, prevent domination, and preserve human responsibility. The encyclical therefore connects theological anthropology with questions of institutional design. It asks not only whether particular uses of AI are morally permissible, but whether the social arrangements surrounding them allow persons and communities to remain genuine agents rather than passive objects of technological management.

3.

Thematic Emphases and Normative Orientations

Human Dignity and the Principles of Catholic Social Teaching

Magnifica humanitas integrates AI into Catholic social teaching. Technological systems must be evaluated through the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, and social justice rather than through efficiency, profitability, or innovation alone (MH, nos. 46–84). The common good asks whether technology supports conditions in which all can flourish. The universal destination of goods raises questions about access to data, knowledge, infrastructure, and computational resources. Subsidiarity requires that systems not deprive persons and communities of meaningful agency. Solidarity directs attention toward those who bear technological risks without sharing in the benefits, while social justice requires assessment of effects on work, services, political participation, and inequality.

The encyclical accordingly rejects dignity as a merely introductory declaration in ethical guidelines. Dignity must generate rights, duties, accountability, remedies, and institutional arrangements that protect persons from exclusion and instrumentalisation. This also means that the benefits of technological innovation cannot be assessed separately from the distribution of risks. Systems that increase aggregate efficiency while systematically burdening workers, vulnerable groups, or economically weaker societies remain ethically deficient even where they produce measurable gains. The social principles operate together rather than as isolated standards: solidarity without subsidiarity may become paternalistic, while subsidiarity without solidarity may leave weaker persons and communities without the resources required for meaningful agency.

Technocratic Power, Governance, and Economic Concentration

Building on Laudato si’, Magnifica humanitas describes the technocratic paradigm as a social logic in which efficiency, control, and profit become dominant standards for evaluating persons, institutions, and creation (MH, nos. 92–98). Digital systems shape what becomes visible, organise access to resources, and influence political and social decisions. Technology must therefore be analysed as a form of power rather than as a neutral collection of instruments.

The encyclical gives particular attention to the concentration of data, capital, infrastructure, energy, and expertise. Control over these resources enables a limited number of actors to influence labour markets, public services, information environments, and collective understandings of reality. The concern is not only economic inequality but also weakened democratic control and social participation. When states and communities become dependent on privately controlled infrastructures, formal political sovereignty may coexist with limited practical capacity to shape technological development. The governance of AI therefore concerns the distribution of institutional power as much as the ethical behaviour of individual developers or users.

The document calls for transparency, public oversight, institutional accountability, and governance capable of subjecting technological power to the common good (MH, nos. 99–111). Regulation should neither suppress legitimate innovation nor leave socially consequential systems entirely to private self-regulation. States, businesses, intermediary organisations, professional communities, and citizens possess differentiated responsibilities. Public authorities must retain the capacity to protect rights and democratic participation, while companies must account for the social consequences of the systems they develop and control. Intermediary institutions and professional bodies can translate general ethical principles into sector-specific standards, while citizens require access to information and procedures through which automated decisions can be challenged. Ethical evaluation must therefore examine technological design, business models, data practices, ownership structures, and available remedies, not merely the intentions of individual users. The encyclical’s approach is consequently neither anti-technological nor satisfied with voluntary ethics; it seeks an institutional order in which innovation remains answerable to public purposes.

Truth, Communication, and the Collective Imagination

The encyclical treats truth as a common good essential to democratic life and social trust (MH, nos. 131–147). Digital platforms and generative AI can widen access to information and participation, but can also amplify disinformation, blur the distinction between fact and fabrication, fragment public discourse, and allow powerful actors to shape collective perceptions.

The concept of the “collective imagination” identifies communication power as cultural and anthropological power. Those who control platforms, infrastructures, and algorithmic selection can influence the categories through which societies interpret identity, family, political life, consumption, success, and religion (MH, nos. 132–136). Algorithmic systems do not merely distribute existing content; through ranking, recommendation, and repetition they can privilege certain representations of reality and render others less visible. The ethical question therefore includes who possesses the authority to organise attention and under which conditions that power is exercised.

In response, the encyclical proposes an “ecology of communication” (MH, nos. 137–140). A healthy information environment requires transparency in recommendation systems, protection of personal data, pluralistic spaces for debate, responsible journalism, verification of sources, strong intermediary institutions, and education in the critical use of digital tools. Families, schools, universities, media organisations, and public institutions share responsibility for preserving spaces in which attention and judgement can develop. The goal is not centralised control of truth but conditions in which inquiry, verification, argumentation, trust, reflection, and dialogue remain possible. The encyclical therefore connects information integrity with the quality of social relationships and democratic institutions rather than reducing it to the technical detection of false content.

Labour, Automation, and Economic Participation

Drawing on Rerum novarum and Laborem exercens, the encyclical presents work as a dimension of human development, responsibility, creativity, social participation, and service to the common good (MH, nos. 148–169). AI may remove repetitive, dangerous, or physically burdensome tasks, but can also be used to reduce costs, intensify surveillance, accelerate work, de-skill employees, or adapt workers to machines rather than technology to human needs. The moral assessment of automation therefore depends on how decisions are made, who participates in them, and how benefits and burdens are distributed. Innovation that improves efficiency while excluding workers from deliberation and transferring risks downward cannot be justified by productivity alone.

Productivity gains cannot by themselves justify the systematic elimination of employment or the concentration of technological benefits. Retraining, education, fair remuneration, worker participation, employment security, and the stability of families and communities are matters of social justice. Workers should also participate in decisions concerning the introduction of technologies that substantially reshape their tasks and working conditions. The encyclical rejects the assumption that financial compensation can fully replace meaningful work. Work contributes not only to income but also to identity, responsibility, cooperation, and social recognition. A society may therefore become materially productive while excluding large parts of the population from participation and creative activity.

Freedom, Algorithmic Dependence, and Commercialisation

The analysis of freedom extends beyond formal consent. Digital services can be designed to capture attention, exploit vulnerabilities, and encourage dependency (MH, nos. 170–179). When commercial success depends on manipulation, the person becomes an instrument of profit. The encyclical thus treats freedom not simply as the initial acceptance of terms and conditions but as the continuing capacity to understand, resist, and contest technological influence. Data collection also allows institutions to profile, predict, and shape behaviour. Where profiles affect credit, employment, insurance, services, or visibility, freedom requires transparency, limits on intrusive technologies, access to remedies, and meaningful human review.

The encyclical further draws attention to the material and labour infrastructures behind apparently immaterial AI services. Digital systems depend on energy, natural resources, data labelling, content moderation, precarious work, and global supply chains. The rhetoric of frictionless automation can conceal the labour and environmental costs on which technological services depend. Ethical analysis must therefore include those whose often invisible work and environments bear these costs. Public authorities, companies, educators, and citizens have differentiated responsibilities for regulation, fair business models, critical judgement, and digital moderation.

Warfare, Peace, and Multilateral Governance

Magnifica humanitas situates military AI within a wider culture of power characterised by polarisation, competition for technological supremacy, the normalisation of war, and weakened multilateral institutions (MH, nos. 182–228). AI affects warfare through autonomous weapons, surveillance, cyberattacks, information manipulation, target identification, and accelerated decision-making. Technological distance can weaken responsibility and reduce persons to data points.

The encyclical insists that decisions involving human life cannot be transferred to machines. Its call to “disarm” AI means freeing technological development from logics of domination, exclusion, and death and subjecting it to moral responsibility, public control, international law, and peace. The issue extends beyond autonomous weapons to cyberattacks, information warfare, surveillance, and the acceleration of military decisions. These technologies may increase tactical precision while simultaneously lowering political thresholds for the use of force or obscuring chains of responsibility. Because technologies and corporations operate across borders, the document defends diplomacy, international cooperation, and renewed multilateral institutions. It rejects both utopian technological optimism and political realism that treats domination and arms competition as inevitable, appealing instead to a “healthy realism”. Lasting peace cannot be secured through technological superiority alone. Rather, it requires institutions that can maintain dialogue, accountability and attention to victims.

4.

Place within the Church’s Teaching and Media Tradition

Magnifica humanitas offers the most systematic integration of AI into Catholic social teaching within the corpus. It receives the Rome Call’s concern with dignity and governance, the 2024 messages’ emphasis on meaningful human control and communication, and Antiqua et nova’s distinction between human and artificial intelligence, but places them within a wider analysis of work, economic concentration, political authority, freedom, communication, war, and international order. The relationship to Catholic media teaching remains visible in its account of communication as a relational and social good, but the object of analysis has broadened to include infrastructures, ownership, economic incentives, and algorithmic power. Its “ecology of communication” develops earlier concerns with truthful information and participation by locating them within the institutional conditions that organise visibility, attention, and public discourse. Its distinctive contribution is therefore to move from the ethics of particular applications toward the systemic evaluation of technological society. The encyclical consolidates the third phase by interpreting AI as an interconnected contemporary social question rather than merely as a new communications medium or technical tool. It also makes clear that anthropological principles require juridical and political translation if they are to constrain technological power in practice. It does not, however, provide a technical regulatory programme; its role is to supply criteria through which legal and political institutions may judge technological arrangements.

4. Discussion

The historical reconstruction and the comparative analysis of the recent AI-related corpus reveal neither a linear transition from rejection to acceptance nor the replacement of one ecclesial approach by another. Instead, Catholic reflection on media and technology develops through the accumulation, modification, and coexistence of different regulatory, pastoral, dialogical, anthropological, and social–ethical modes of engagement. The five recent interventions examined in this article—the Rome Call for AI Ethics, the two papal messages issued by Francis in 2024, Antiqua et nova, and Magnifica humanitas—illustrate this plurality particularly clearly. They share several concerns, including human responsibility, the common good, social inclusion, meaningful human control, and the dangers associated with concentrated technological power. They nevertheless differ considerably in institutional form, theological explicitness, intended audience, normative force, and mode of argumentation.

4.1. Anthropological Continuity and Conceptual Transformation

The analysis does not support the claim that an unchanged doctrine of human dignity has governed every stage of Catholic media teaching in an identical form. The earlier documents examined in this article rarely employ the fully developed vocabulary of human dignity, embodiment, relationality, or integral human development that characterises the contemporary AI corpus. Their anthropological concerns are expressed primarily through the protection of truth and moral order, the vulnerability of the faithful, ecclesial responsibility, public morality, and the salvation of souls. Communication technologies are evaluated according to their perceived capacity either to support or to endanger these goods.

Following the Second Vatican Council, the vocabulary changes substantially. Communication is increasingly connected with communion, participation, public opinion, freedom of information, dialogue, pastoral responsibility, and the common good. The human person is no longer treated principally as a recipient requiring protection from harmful content, but increasingly as a participant in ecclesial and social communication. This development does not eliminate doctrinal oversight, but it broadens the anthropological and ecclesiological framework within which communication is evaluated.

The contemporary AI documents develop this concern further by concentrating on human agency, embodiment, relationality, freedom, work, moral judgement, and responsibility within technologically structured environments. The continuity identified across the corpus is therefore neither terminological nor doctrinally static. It consists in the recurring subordination of communication and technology to an evolving Catholic understanding of the human person and of the social conditions required for human flourishing.

The recent documents express this concern through different forms of argumentation. The Rome Call for AI Ethics translates human-centred ethical concerns into the broadly accessible language of human rights, inclusion, transparency, and responsibility (Pontifical Academy for Life 2020). Francis’s two messages of 2024 connect these concerns more explicitly with creation, the imago Dei, peace, moral responsibility, and the wisdom of the heart (Francis 2024a, 2024b). Antiqua et nova offers the most systematic philosophical and theological distinction between human intelligence and computational functionality within the corpus (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dicastery for Culture and Education 2025). Magnifica humanitas then integrates this anthropology into the principles and systemic concerns of Catholic social teaching (Leo XIV 2026).

The documents therefore do not simply repeat the same concept of human dignity. Rather, they demonstrate how an anthropological concern is translated into different institutional languages: human rights, pastoral exhortation, theological anthropology, and Catholic social doctrine. This distinction is important because it prevents superficial continuity from obscuring real developments in the theological grounding and normative function of the concept.

4.2. From Media–Pastoral Adaptation to Anthropological and Systemic Reflection

A first major transformation concerns the object of Catholic reflection. Earlier modern documents concentrated primarily on the production, dissemination, reception, and pastoral use of media content. Their central questions concerned what could be published or communicated, how the faithful should use media responsibly, and how the Church should participate in modern communication environments. Even the internet documents of 2002 remained substantially concerned with ecclesial use, pastoral opportunity, ethical content, participation, and the limits of virtual presence.

The recent AI-related corpus broadens this field of inquiry. AI is not treated merely as another channel through which information is transmitted. It is analysed as a collection of socio-technical systems capable of shaping decision-making, labour, communication, education, surveillance, warfare, public administration, and the distribution of social power. The central question is consequently no longer limited to how a particular medium should be used. It increasingly concerns the institutional and anthropological conditions under which technologically mediated decisions remain compatible with human dignity and responsibility.

The two papal messages of 2024 are especially important in this development. Artificial Intelligence and Peace expands the discussion from ethical design principles to labour, inequality, automated decision-making, weapons, international law, and political responsibility. Artificial Intelligence and the Wisdom of the Heart reconnects these issues with the tradition of Catholic media teaching by examining journalism, synthetic content, platform power, information integrity, and the embodied and relational foundations of communication. The messages thus form a bridge between the governance-oriented language of the Rome Call and the more systematic anthropology of Antiqua et nova and social analysis of Magnifica humanitas.

The resulting development is best described as an anthropological and systemic deepening rather than a complete departure from media–pastoral reflection. Questions of communication, education, responsibility, and pastoral presence remain. They are now situated within a broader analysis of the technological infrastructures and institutional powers that condition communication and social participation.

This finding is consistent with scholarship in religion and media that rejects the treatment of media as neutral channels and instead understands them as environments that participate in shaping religious authority, community, practice, and public visibility (Hoover 2006; Hjarvard 2016; Lövheim and Hjarvard 2019; Peterson 2020). It also accords with research in digital religion showing that digital media reconfigure rather than merely transmit ecclesial relationships and practices (Campbell 2010; Hutchings 2017; Campbell and Tsuria 2022). The historical analysis, however, indicates that the emergence of dialogical and relational language did not fully displace instrumental understandings. Even post-conciliar documents frequently evaluate communications media in relation to evangelisation, pastoral planning, and institutional effectiveness. The development is therefore best understood as a broadening of the instrumental model through more relational and socially formative conceptions of communication, rather than as its complete replacement.

4.3. Institutional Diversification and Participation in AI Governance

A second transformation concerns the institutional forms through which Catholic positions are articulated. The Rome Call for AI Ethics represents a distinctive form of engagement because it emerged as a voluntary multi-stakeholder initiative involving a pontifical academy, international and governmental actors, and major technology companies. Its authority depends not on canonical promulgation or the exercise of papal teaching authority, but on public commitment, institutional cooperation, and the capacity to establish shared principles across religious and organisational boundaries.

The Rome Call’s reliance on the broadly accessible language of human rights, ethical governance, and shared responsibility enables cooperation across religious and institutional boundaries. At the same time, this mode of engagement involves less explicit theological specificity than is found in the subsequent papal and dicastery documents. Its significance should therefore be understood primarily as an innovation in the Church’s mode of public and institutional engagement with technological governance, rather than as a development of ecclesiology or doctrine in the strict sense.

This does not mean that the Church has moved from hierarchical teaching to global governance partnership in a simple or comprehensive sense. The subsequent corpus demonstrates the continued importance of more conventional ecclesial forms. Francis’s messages exercise the papal teaching office in a pastoral mode; Antiqua et nova speaks through the doctrinal and cultural competence of two Roman dicasteries; and Magnifica humanitas presents an extended papal reflection within the tradition of Catholic social teaching. Multi-stakeholder cooperation therefore supplements rather than replaces papal and curial teaching.

The institutional diversity of the corpus also corresponds to different normative functions. The Rome Call seeks consensus around voluntary principles capable of guiding developers, companies, governments, and civil-society actors. The papal messages offer moral and political orientation to a global audience. Antiqua et nova clarifies the theological and anthropological criteria through which AI should be interpreted. Magnifica humanitas places AI within a more extensive analysis of the common good, labour, political power, communication, peace, and social justice. These modes of intervention should not be collapsed into a single category of “Church teaching,” because their authority, intended audience, and practical effects differ substantially.

At the same time, the relationship between cooperation and critique generates an important tension. The Rome Call depends partly on partnership with technology corporations, while the later documents express growing concern about the concentration of data, capital, infrastructure, and decision-making power in a limited number of private actors. This tension should not necessarily be understood as a contradiction. It may reflect the Church’s attempt to combine engagement with actors capable of shaping technological development and critical scrutiny of the structures within which those actors operate. Nevertheless, such cooperation creates questions concerning independence, accountability, and the risk that voluntary ethical commitments may legitimise corporate self-regulation without producing sufficient external oversight.

4.4. From Application-Oriented Ethics to the Critique of Technological Structures

A third transformation concerns the level at which ethical problems are identified. The Rome Call concentrates strongly on principles to be incorporated into the development and deployment of AI systems, including transparency, inclusion, responsibility, impartiality, reliability, security, and privacy. This ethics-by-design orientation seeks to influence technological practices from within the processes of innovation.

The two papal messages of 2024 broaden the analysis by linking the design and use of AI with labour markets, democratic institutions, warfare, international law, journalism, and public communication. Antiqua et nova adds a systematic account of moral agency and applies it across multiple social fields. Magnifica humanitas extends the critique still further by examining the political economy and cultural environment of AI: the concentration of technological power, the ownership of infrastructure and data, the commodification of attention, the surveillance of workers and users, and the possible weakening of democratic participation.

The development should therefore not be described simply as a movement from regulation to systemic critique. Regulation remains important throughout the recent corpus, while systemic analysis does not eliminate the need for rules governing particular applications. A more accurate description is an expansion from application-oriented ethical principles toward the simultaneous evaluation of technological design, institutional governance, economic structures, and cultural consequences.

This development also reconnects Catholic AI reflection with the broader tradition of Catholic social teaching. Questions of technological power are interpreted through the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity, the universal destination of goods, social justice, and the dignity of work. AI thus appears not only as a technical innovation but as part of a contemporary social question involving the organisation of economic and political life.

4.5. Normative Method and Practical Indeterminacy

Elements resembling the see–judge–act structure are particularly visible in the papal and dicastery documents, although the institutional and argumentative form of the Rome Call differs substantially. The recent papal and curial texts generally begin from technological and social developments, interpret them through theological anthropology and Catholic social principles, and derive normative guidance for developers, governments, educators, media institutions, and citizens. The Rome Call, by contrast, is organised as a declaration of shared commitments and governance principles rather than as an explicit exercise in theological or pastoral discernment.

Even where a recognisable movement from social observation to normative judgement is present, however, the documents differ in the specificity of their practical conclusions. They repeatedly call for transparency, accountability, human control, inclusion, international cooperation, and appropriate regulation. These calls establish important evaluative criteria, but frequently leave open which institutions should implement them, through which legal instruments, under which standards of review, and with what mechanisms of enforcement.

The theological distinction between human and artificial intelligence also does not by itself resolve concrete questions concerning liability, risk classification, data protection, intellectual property, automated administrative decisions, or the prohibition of particular applications. Anthropological clarification can identify what should be protected and why, but it must be translated into more specific juridical, political, and technical standards before it can guide institutional practice.

The limited legal force of most documents further intensifies this implementation problem. The Rome Call is voluntary; the papal messages and Antiqua et nova provide authoritative ethical and pastoral guidance but do not create directly enforceable secular obligations; and Magnifica humanitas, despite its importance as a papal encyclical, does not itself function as a technical regulatory instrument. Their public significance therefore depends upon reception by legislators, international organisations, companies, professional bodies, educational institutions, episcopal conferences, and other actors capable of translating general principles into concrete practices.

4.6. Critical Limits of the Periodisation and the AI Category

The three-phase periodisation developed in this article should itself be treated critically. It makes dominant changes visible, but it necessarily simplifies a history in which regulatory, instrumental, pastoral, dialogical, and anthropological approaches overlap. Control and supervision did not disappear after the Second Vatican Council, as the continuing canonical regulation of publications demonstrates. Conversely, pre-conciliar documents were not exclusively prohibitive; they also encouraged Catholic media production, institutional participation, education, and constructive engagement with emerging technologies.

The boundaries between the second and third phases are similarly permeable. Anthropological and social concerns were already present in earlier Catholic teaching, while pastoral and instrumental questions continue within the AI period. The third phase therefore does not begin at a single decisive moment. It emerges through transitional developments visible in Laudato si’, Fratelli tutti, the Rome Call, and the two papal messages of 2024 before receiving more systematic expression in Antiqua et nova and Magnifica humanitas.

A further limitation concerns the category of “artificial intelligence” itself: the recent documents sometimes discuss AI as though it were a relatively unified technological object. In practice, the term includes heterogeneous systems, ranging from statistical classification and recommendation systems to generative models, biometric surveillance, medical decision-support tools, and autonomous weapons. Their capacities, risks, institutional settings, and appropriate regulatory responses differ substantially. General anthropological and ethical principles remain valuable, but their practical application requires greater technological differentiation.

The human–machine distinction developed particularly in Antiqua et nova also invites further critical examination. Its emphasis on embodiment, relationality, moral responsibility, and openness to truth offers an important corrective to functionalist accounts of intelligence. At the same time, an overly schematic contrast between human and artificial intelligence may obscure the ways in which human agency is already distributed across persons, institutions, data infrastructures, and technical systems. The principal ethical problem is not always whether a machine possesses genuinely human intelligence, but how human decisions and responsibilities are reorganised through complex socio-technical arrangements.

4.7. Overall Assessment

Taken together, the analysis shows that Catholic reflection on communication and technology has expanded in scope without abandoning its earlier regulatory, pastoral, and dialogical concerns. The recent AI-related corpus brings anthropological, institutional, and systemic questions into sharper focus, particularly those concerning human agency, responsibility, technological power, and the common good. Yet the diversity of document types and the limited practical specificity of many recommendations caution against treating these interventions as a unified or directly enforceable programme. Their principal contribution lies in providing a normative framework whose practical significance depends on further legal, political, institutional, and interdisciplinary translation.

5. Conclusions

This article has traced the development of Catholic teaching at the universal level on media, communication, and technology, from the nineteenth-century confrontation with press freedom to contemporary engagement with artificial intelligence. The historical trajectory reveals neither a simple linear progression from rejection to acceptance, nor a mere adaptation of ecclesial communication strategy to technological change. Rather, it discloses a complex development in which regulatory, pastoral, dialogical, anthropological, and social–ethical modes of engagement emerge, overlap, and continue to coexist.

The analysis supports the usefulness of distinguishing three broad heuristic phases. The first phase, extending from Mirari vos to the Second Vatican Council, was marked by defensive regulation, moral vigilance, and the simultaneous construction of Catholic media institutions. The Church’s relationship to modern media was shaped by suspicion toward liberal publicity, but also by the growing recognition that mediated communication had become indispensable for ecclesial presence. The second phase, inaugurated by Inter mirifica and developed more fully in Communio et progressio, shifted the dominant emphasis toward pastoral appropriation, dialogue, media education, participation, and institutional engagement. The third phase, emerging through the Church’s recent engagement with artificial intelligence, marks a significant broadening of the field. AI is addressed not merely as another communications medium, but as a socio-technical phenomenon affecting intelligence, freedom, embodiment, labour, truth, political authority, economic power, peace, and the common good.

The recent AI-related corpus examined in this article illustrates this development through several institutionally distinct forms of intervention. The Rome Call for AI Ethics introduces a voluntary multi-stakeholder model centred on shared governance principles, human rights, responsibility, and ethical design. The two papal messages issued by Francis in 2024 connect this governance-oriented approach with papal teaching on peace, communication, meaningful human control, international responsibility, and the wisdom of the heart. Antiqua et nova develops a more systematic theological and philosophical account of the distinction between human intelligence and computational functionality, while Magnifica humanitas integrates AI into the wider framework of Catholic social teaching and interprets it as a contemporary social question involving work, communication, freedom, power, and international order.

The analysis identifies not an unchanged doctrine of human dignity, but a developing anthropological concern whose vocabulary, theological grounding, and normative function change considerably over time. Earlier documents articulate this concern primarily through truth, moral order, ecclesial responsibility, public morality, and the salvation of souls. Post-conciliar teaching increasingly employs the language of communion, participation, rights, dialogue, and the common good. In the recent AI corpus, these concerns are reformulated through embodiment, relationality, human agency, moral judgement, vulnerability, responsibility, and integral human development. The continuity identified across the corpus therefore lies not in terminological uniformity, but in the recurring effort to subordinate communication and technology to an evolving Catholic understanding of the human person and the conditions of human flourishing.

At the same time, the recent documents expand Catholic reflection from questions concerning the moral use and pastoral appropriation of media toward the systemic evaluation of technological environments. Attention is directed not only toward individual applications, but also toward infrastructures, ownership structures, economic incentives, algorithmic systems, labour relations, surveillance practices, and concentrations of political and corporate power. This expansion does not eliminate earlier regulatory or pastoral concerns. Instead, it situates them within a broader analysis of the social and institutional conditions under which technological systems are developed and deployed.

The contribution of Catholic teaching at the universal level to contemporary debates on AI lies less in detailed technical regulation than in theological, anthropological, and social–ethical clarification. Its central claim is that technological systems must remain subject to human responsibility and ordered toward dignity, justice, solidarity, participation, and the common good. The recent documents provide important criteria for evaluating AI, but they often leave questions of implementation, institutional competence, legal enforceability, and technological differentiation unresolved. Their practical significance will therefore depend on how their principles are translated into legal norms, professional standards, corporate practices, educational programmes, and institutional forms of accountability.

Further research should examine how these universal-level Catholic teachings are received, interpreted, and implemented by particular Churches, episcopal conferences, dioceses, religious orders, Catholic media organisations, and other ecclesial institutions. It also remains to be explored how recent Catholic documents on AI may affect the interpretation and future development of existing canonical norms on social communications. Finally, the relationship between Catholic AI ethics and emerging national and supranational regulatory frameworks, particularly the European AI Act, deserves closer analysis. These questions demonstrate that Catholic reflection on media and technology remains a dynamic field in which ecclesiology, Catholic social teaching, canon law, theological anthropology, and digital governance increasingly intersect.