Disarming Artificial Intelligence for a Civilization of Love Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas and Media Missiology

Abstract

Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, reframes artificial intelligence (AI) ethics around a single verb: to disarm. This paper offers a critical, literature-based reading of the encyclical from a missiological and media-studies standpoint, examining what it means for the Church's communicative mission when today's media environment functions as an "architecture of visibility" governed by a "culture of power." Situating the encyclical within Catholic communication teaching—from Inter Mirifica and Communio et Progressio to Antiqua et Nova—and in dialogue with media ecology and surveillance-capitalism scholarship, the study identifies a gap: existing digital-missiology literature treats media as a neutral channel for the Gospel, while Magnifica Humanitas treats the algorithmic environment as a contested moral order. To address this gap, we propose an original framework, the Disarmed Witness, structured around three vectors—kenosis over kratos, communion over visibility, and finitude over technical self-transcendence—each linked to a diagnosis in the encyclical and a corresponding missionary-media praxis. We argue that the call to "disarm" AI is fundamentally a missiological grammar rather than a policy demand, reframing evangelisation as self-emptying witness against the logic of force. The paper contributes a novel theoretical model, an assessment of its tensions, and an agenda for missionary-media research and practice