That’s what I asked myself when I first glimpsed the Latin title of Pope Leo’s recent Encyclical: Magnifica Humanitas.

The meaning of those words seemed to me clear, at least in English: “Magnificent Humanity.”

But then immediately I was puzzled. What “Humanity”? We cruel, self-destructive creatures? And “magnificent”? What is the Pope talking about? Do the Pope and I live on the same planet? With our persecutions of each other, our greed, our racism, our wars, our trashing of our environment—“magnificent”?

But after jumping to such ready-made cynical conclusions, I reflected on the fact that English “magnificent” isn’t quite the same as Latin magnifica. English “magnificent” is a term used in utmost admiration. An event or an action or even a person is impressively, extravagantly beautiful or great. They’re just that way. But Latin magnifica comes from two Latin words: magnus (=great) and facio (=make). So magnifica means, not “great”—that is, great all by itself—, but instead “made great.” Something contributes to humanitas whereby it becomes great. It can’t do it all on its own.

So what is the Pope getting at? Is this “something” a papal secret? A mystery power he’s going to keep us wondering about through his whole long 245 paragraph Encyclical?

No, there’s no false drama here. The drama is clearly and calmly outlined right from the start, beginning with a clarification of his use of magnifica in the very first sentence:

Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.

Like all previous Encyclicals, this one takes its title from its opening two words in Latin. But in the English version, Pope Leo decided to leave no doubt about what he means by magnifica. So in place of one word in Latin, he gives us seven in English: “created by God in all its splendor.” No mistaking what he means now. We human beings are not “magnificent” all by ourselves, the way some of us are all too tempted to assume. Nor are we the monsters that others of us have come to believe. Our opinions have little weight in view of the fact that we are all already “magnifica” by virtue of our creation.

But now arises a second possible confusion. Even if we’re magnifica by virtue of our creation, how comes it that our behavior has so often contradicted—even defied—that divinely-given “magnificence”?

That confusion, no sooner popping up than it’s answered, again in the first sentence.

This “magnificent humanity” is not a static, once-in-for-all feat, a rabbit pulled out of the divine hat. Humanity has been created not simply to be but to do. We have been given a task, a mission dependent on perhaps the most mysterious, certainly the riskiest aspect of humanity’s magnificence: the freedom given it to choose either to ruin its creator’s project—to “un-magnificent” itself by constructing “a new Tower of Babel”—or to act to perfect its magnificence, to become magnificence’s co-creators, by rebuilding from the ruins of Babel a new Jerusalem, “the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”

The whole of Magnifica Humanitas outlines in comprehensive detail the scope of the “pivotal choice” in our time (even addressing, now famously, the threat posed by AI). But as the rest of the first paragraph clarifies, this choice between building Babel or transforming its ruins into a new Jerusalem has been pivotal and will always be pivotal in every generation:

Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world. Whenever humanity is in danger of marring its true identity, we Christians lift our eyes to the Incarnate God, knowing that it is “only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.” In Jesus Christ, this humanity in its grandeur becomes the Way, the Truth and the Life, opening the path for each of us to grow toward fullness.

So we’ve moved in this first paragraph from the dynamic center of humanity—the fact that humanity is, all of it, “made great” by God—to an unfolding of our own role in our making-great, in our magnifica.  But to Pope Leo and to the Catholic Christians for whom he writes, the drama of humanity’s struggle to use its freedom responsibly has a specific further dimension and goal. The drama promises divine guidance on our journey, because it is “only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear.” Our choices, even our worst ones, are never, can never be the last word. Because the last Word is not ours. Nor does that Word’s reassurance cover only Christians. It covers and sustains everyone. For that reason, Pope Leo throughout the Encyclical is explicitly referring to all humanity when he calls us magnifica.

And that is how a Muslim friend of mine took it. She felt as strengthened and uplifted by Magnifica Humanitas as I did. “It’s a real sign of hope, the first I’ve heard in a long time. We’ll just have to adapt it to our own way of expressing these things,” she said.

 Amen to that.

After getting his PhD in English literature, George Dardess taught close reading to his own students until his retirement. Since then he has been ordained a Deacon in the Roman Catholic Church and written several books on Muslim-Christian relations. He has also created the graphic novel Foreign Exchange.

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