Magnifica Humanitas: Professor Lushombo shares insights on AI and social justice in Africa
Professor Léocadie Wabo Lushombo, a Congolese theologian, emphasizes that Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas calls for a love‑based civilization and active participation to reduce societal inequalities. She criticizes the exploitation of Africa and neo‑colonial extractive practices, arguing the continent should not be reduced to a resource for foreign tech giants. Lushombo warns that AI and new technologies are increasing dependency, labor exploitation, environmental damage, and eroding community cohesion in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She stresses that the encyclical is not anti‑AI; instead, it calls for accountability, local participation, and ethical use of technology rooted in love.
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Professor Léocadie Wabo Lushombo, a Congolese theologian at Santa Clara University, links Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas to the challenges and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence in Africa, urging a love‑driven, community‑based response that counters exploitation and fosters ethical use of technology 1.
Lushombo observes that AI and mobile technologies are reshaping daily life even in rural parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, creating new consumer habits and power imbalances 1.
She describes a growing dependency on tech giants, noting that young people often turn to devices like the iPhone for answers, while data costs burden users 1.
According to her, these dynamics constitute a “structural sin” that harms the environment, exploits labor, and erodes communal cohesion 1.
The professor stresses that Magnifica Humanitas is not anti‑AI but calls for a change in mindset, accountability, and corporate responsibility 1.
She advocates for local communities to be actively involved in designing AI solutions, likening the process to building society “brick by brick” as urged by the Pope 1.
Rooted in the “civilization of love,” this approach seeks to reduce inequalities rather than widen them for profit 1.
Lushombo interprets the encyclical’s vision of a “civilization of love” as a call to care for neighbours and address systemic injustices 1.
She argues that AI should be harnessed to serve the common good, aligning technological development with the Church’s moral teachings 1.
The theologian sees a pivotal role for African churches in facilitating dialogue, media education, and the strengthening of Small Christian Communities, Justice and Peace groups 1.
These structures can provide safe spaces for people to voice concerns, learn about AI, and co‑create solutions that reflect local values 1.*
Assess Catholic social teaching on AI ethics and African justice
Catholic social teaching evaluates AI ethics not as a purely technical question, but as a question about human dignity, the common good, and justice for vulnerable peoples, including those in Africa who face structural poverty, conflict, and exploitation.
Catholic social doctrine places the human person at the center of all social and economic arrangements. A “just society” exists only when it is based on the “respect [for] the transcendent dignity of the human person,” and when the social order works for the benefit of the person.
Applied to AI, this means that AI must be assessed by whether it protects people from becoming instruments, rather than whether it is merely efficient or profitable. The Magnifica Humanitas framework explicitly directs discernment toward whether digital infrastructures and algorithms: foster participation and responsibility, protect the vulnerable, ensure fair access to opportunities, and remain directed to the good of all.
Catholic social teaching insists that social arrangements must be ordered toward the common good and the universal destination of goods—a principle that undercuts “winner-take-all” technological development that excludes entire populations.
On this view, AI ethics requires asking: Does AI enlarge access to knowledge, education, and livelihoods, or does it deepen exclusion? Pope Francis explicitly warns that AI could increase injustice between advanced/developing nations, and even intensify a “throwaway culture” rather than a “culture of encounter.”
Subsidiarity means decisions should be taken at the lowest competent level and should respect intermediary bodies rather than centralizing power. Solidarity means that justice is guaranteed when “the abundance of some compensates for the want of others.”
In the context of AI, Magnifica Humanitas treats “subsidiarity” and “solidarity” as part of the criteria for judgment and discernment. This implies that AI governance cannot be limited to private actors or distant regulators; it must include genuine participation, especially by those most affected.
Pope Francis stresses that AI is “above all else a tool” and that the moral quality of outcomes depends on its use—but he also insists that human control is essential.
He gives a concrete ethical warning: when AI systems are used in decision-making that affects people’s futures (e.g., prediction tools used in judicial contexts), the process can implicitly incorporate prejudices through the categories and data used, and can risk delegating “the last word concerning a person’s future” to a machine.
He then draws a decisive anthropological line: “decision-making… must always be left to the human person.”
Catholic social teaching therefore rejects any ethics of AI that treats algorithmic outputs as final judgments—especially where those judgments determine access to welfare, justice, employment, education, or migration.
Pope Francis also frames a cultural-ethical issue: debates about AI regulation must not become debates only about computation. He distinguishes between the operation of algorithms and the power of the “heart,” understood as the seat of deepest authentic sentiments, noting that the human heart can never deceive in the same way algorithms may.
This matters for AI ethics because it critiques a tendency to reduce persons to “realities expressible in numbers and enclosed in predetermined categories” (the Magnifica Humanitas description of the “Babel syndrome”).
Magnifica Humanitas emphasizes that the digital world concentrates power in a way that complicates judgment and governance. It argues that “the primary choice” is not between a simplistic “yes” or “no” to technology, but between constructing “Babel” (profit and power that sacrifices the weak) and rebuilding “Jerusalem” (working together in God’s presence to restore fraternal coexistence).
It also explicitly says that it is necessary to establish “adequate regulatory tools capable of upholding justice and curbing the distorting effects of technological power,” especially because the main drivers of development may be private, often transnational, actors with power surpassing many governments.
That structural reality directly affects African justice: if AI ecosystems are shaped by external interests without accountability, the result can be a modern form of domination—one that risks reproducing unequal global bargaining power and unequal protection.
Pope Francis lists values that must be respected for AI to serve peace and integral development—“inclusion, transparency, security, equity, privacy and reliability”—and he insists that technology that aggravates inequalities and conflicts cannot be true progress.
From a Catholic justice perspective, these are not optional “technical best practices.” They are moral conditions for whether AI enhances dignity and common good, particularly for those who are historically marginalized or excluded.
In Africae Munus, Benedict XVI teaches that grave injustices challenge human consciences. In particular, “the plundering of the goods of the earth by a minority to the detriment of entire peoples is unacceptable, because it is immoral.” Justice requires “render to each his due,” including for whole peoples.
This provides a direct ethical lens for AI:
Benedict XVI links justice and peace to subsidiarity and solidarity (and still more to charity). He explicitly states that, according to subsidiarity, “neither the state nor any larger society should substitute itself for the initiative and responsibility of individuals and intermediary bodies.”
So in African contexts, Catholic teaching implies AI ethics must respect local agency:
John Paul II described Africa as needing “peace, justice and reconciliation” amid violence, poverty, and injustice, and he called for international assistance so African peoples can be “active subjects and protagonists of their own future.”
When AI is introduced without ensuring African participation and benefit-sharing, it risks converting protagonists into objects—undermining precisely the kind of agency John Paul II demands.
Pope Francis calls for a “platform of public interest on artificial intelligence” so every nation can use AI for development and the fight against poverty, while protecting local cultures and languages. He adds that only by enabling every people to contribute to the creation of data used by AI will AI “reflect the true diversity and richness” of the human family.
This is an African-justice claim in ethical form:
In the context of AI regulation, Francis says debates must take into account “the poor, the powerless and others who often go unheard in global decision-making processes.”
For Africa, this means AI policy cannot be made only by high-income regulators and firms. It must involve the affected societies—especially those most exposed to harm, discrimination, or digital exclusion.
Francis’s example about predictive AI in legal decisions highlights a broader moral risk relevant to African justice systems: where AI predictions determine outcomes, bias can become “justice by proxy,” and human dignity and mercy can be displaced by statistical inference.
Thus, African justice—already burdened by violence and inequality—should not be made more vulnerable by tools that lack transparency, human accountability, and safeguards against prejudice.
Magnifica Humanitas provides a practical moral checklist: assess whether AI fosters participation and responsibility, protects the vulnerable, ensures fair access to opportunities, and is directed to the good of all.
Catholic teaching (in Pope Francis’s explicit claim) requires that decision-making “must always be left to the human person,” especially when decisions affect a person’s life trajectory.
Because AI development is increasingly driven by private, transnational actors, Catholic social teaching calls for “adequate regulatory tools” oriented toward justice.
The “Babel vs Jerusalem” framework is an ethical model for AI culture:
For African justice, this means AI ecosystems should be built through participatory structures that support local roles and communal flourishing, not through external “one-size-fits-all” homogenization.
Catholic social teaching evaluates AI ethics through dignity-centered criteria (human person, common good, subsidiarity, solidarity, justice) and through a moral anthropology that insists human beings—not machines—make decisive judgments in human-stakes matters.
Because Catholic social teaching on Africa emphasizes justice for whole peoples, rejects exploitation that plunders goods and opportunities for a minority, and calls for African peoples to be active protagonists of their development, the ethical debate on AI cannot be separated from African justice. AI that excludes African languages and cultures, concentrates power without accountability, or enables biased algorithmic “decision by prediction” runs directly against the Church’s justice-centered vision of both technological progress and African reconciliation.