Updated at 5:01 p.m. ET on July 4, 2026
President Trump is set to mark the 250th anniversary of the United States today with an elaborate celebration in Washington, D.C., featuring military flyovers and a fireworks display that organizers say will break world records. America’s other global leader, however, has chosen to spend Independence Day quite differently.
The Vatican, as one aphorism puts it, tends to “think in centuries.” But Pope Leo XIV seems intent on changing that, moving with remarkable speed to publish his first encyclical today, Magnifica Humanitas, “on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” Leo has managed to produce a major teaching document on AI while college students are still booing commencement speeches about how the technology will change the world.
Until today, nearly every Vatican insider agreed on one thing: The United States would never produce a pope, at least not while the country remains a superpower. A citizen of the world’s dominant nation could not become the leader of the world’s largest religious organization without dramatically upsetting the global balance of geopolitical and cultural power. Or so the thinking went.