I couldn’t survive banters when Arsenal lost its Champions League final.

My Nyamiyaga best friend kept running through her socials and each time something against Arsenal and some typically AI generated. You could see that by all appearances, humanity has never been more connected, informed, or technologically gifted.

We carry entire libraries in our pockets, and a politician in Kampala can quarrel with another in Washington before breakfast, and we can smear another wrongly because of AI .

We are so connected but why do we feel increasingly so inadequate? As I was there swallowing my banters I run through the document (encyclical) released by Pope Leo XIV and its summary seemed to address that human anxiety.

Magnifica Humanitas (“The Magnificence of Humanity”) is his reflection on human dignity in the age of algorithms, markets, loneliness, cold wars, rising nationalism, a disintegrated world and political exhaustion.

It arrives at a moment when the world risks treating human beings not as persons with souls, but as units of productivity, voting blocs, consumers, or worse, data. The encyclical is not merely a Catholic document, it is entering the public square with uncomfortable questions for economists, politicians, educators, and ordinary citizens alike. And it could not have come at a better time.

In Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV extends a tradition begun by Rerum Novarum and Humanae Vitae: defending human dignity against systems that reduce people to labour, convenience, or technology, warning that progress without moral wisdom ultimately weakens both relationships and society itself.

Rerum Novarum defended the worker, Humanae Vitae defended the family, Magnifica Humanitas defends the human person himself, standing bewildered in a digital marketplace that knows his shopping habits better than his neighbours know his suffering.

Uganda’s education policy must move beyond examination obsession. Schools should intentionally teach ethics, civic responsibility, philosophy, and critical reasoning alongside science and technology.

A nation of technically skilled but morally confused citizens cannot sustain democracy or justice; labour policy should recognise human dignity beyond wages alone. Workers increasingly face unstable employment, digital exploitation, and economic insecurity.

Leo reminds policymakers that workers are not disposable instruments for profit; stable families remain society’s first school of virtue, solidarity, and responsibility. Economic systems that destroy family life ultimately weaken the nation itself.

And perhaps the greatest strength Magnifica Humanitas is that it refuses despair. Modern public life often rewards cynicism. Everyone mocks politicians, institutions, religion, and even hope itself.

To believe sincerely in human dignity can seem almost embarrassing. Pope Leo XIV refuses to surrender humanity to pessimism. He insists that every person possesses an inherent worth that no market price, political ideology, or digital algorithm can measure.

He writes that “even the era of AI can become a time in which the Holy Spirit brings about the civilization of love.”

For all our technology, growth statistics, and political arguments, civilisation finally depends on whether people still recognize one another as human beings worthy of dignity, truth, and love.

We can imitate the worst excesses of global modernity: aggressive consumerism, tribal political rage, social fragmentation, and moral confusion. Or we can modernise while still preserving the fact that humanity is relational, sacred, and communal. And perhaps that is exactly what our age lacks most.

The author is a concerned citizen.

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