In May 2026, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” The letter, which examines the impact of artificial intelligence on humanity, includes references to several works of art, but one work and its author grabbed the lion’s share of media attention. Pope Leo quoted author J.R.R. Tolkien’s Gandalf the Grey, one of the most beloved and heroic characters in The Lord of the Rings series.
Pope Leo writes:
“The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: ‘It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.’”
English Professor Jonathan Mulrooney has taught seminars on Tolkien’s work for years and has read the fantasy series upwards of 30 times. This coming academic year, he’ll be on sabbatical researching Tolkien’s personal correspondence.
How does the fiction of a 20th-century Catholic writer, scholar and medievalist dovetail with a discussion of artificial intelligence and its impact on humanity? Mulrooney has thoughts.
How does Tolkien end up in a papal encyclical on AI?
“My colleague Lee Oser has written extensively about what he calls Tolkien’s ‘Christian Humanism.’ And Tolkien said explicitly that The Lord of the Rings is a work of Catholic imagining without being doctrinally Catholic. On the other hand, it’s also the work of one of the 20th century’s great medievalists who was deeply engaged with ‘Beowulf,’ an Old English poem that, in its initial instantiations, represented a pre-Christian understanding of human experience. So there’s this real tension in The Lord of the Rings — and throughout Tolkien’s work — between a pre-Christian understanding of fate and the imminence of death and the Christian notion of repair and restoration, what Tolkien calls “eucatastrophe.’ which is the inversion of catastrophe. The greatest example of this restoration for Tolkien is, of course, Christ’s Resurrection.”
Who is Gandalf?
“That’s a complicated question. Perhaps the simplest answer is that he is a guardian and steward of Middle-Earth and its creatures. In the figure of Gandalf, Tolkien is gesturing toward the Christian notion of incarnation, which means to take on a body that will suffer. Gandalf begins as a Maia, almost like an angel. In the larger Tolkien mythos, several Maia choose to become embodied, to go to Middle-earth to be caretakers of the land and its inhabitants. They do this knowing that they are taking on a vulnerable physical state. Gandalf is one of these ‘Istari.’ And Gandalf does suffer and die to preserve his mission.
“Weirdly, Sauron has the same kind of initial theological standing as Gandalf. But instead of becoming a guide or aid, he takes on various physical forms in order to deceive; he ascends through evil means to have this sort of tyrannical power. Because he rebels against his own created nature, Sauron can only twist and copy and regurgitate (a lot like AI!). There is nothing original in him. Together, Sauron and Gandalf stand in a contrast very much like that which Pope Leo describes when he talks about choosing between the civilization of power and the civilization of love.”
Why that Gandalf quote? There’s one that appears earlier in the series, arguably more famous and more concise: “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
“They're different versions of the same idea, right? In the first instance, Frodo says, ‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ and that's when Gandalf says, ‘So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All they have to decide …” The quote that Pope Leo uses appears later, when Gandalf addresses the captains of the West at what Tolkien calls “The Last Debate,” as Gandalf is trying to rally them to fight Sauron. And they're also, like, ‘Oh my gosh, we can't take on this massive task.’
“Pope Leo’s a savvy enough reader of Tolkien to know the context from which that second quote is taken, which is the moment before a battle for the soul of a civilization. This is a moment when Gandalf is asking the assembly to defend the civilization of love. That commitment is, of course, implicit in what Gandalf says to Frodo earlier in the book, but it’s more explicit and provocative in the quote Pope Leo chose.
“I do think that Pope Leo’s invoking Tolkien is canny for another reason. It illustrates that he is very much aware of how Tolkien has been misappropriated in our current moment for purposes that are anathema to what the Catholic Church and this pope are advocating—think of the rampant pursuit of capital at all costs, or think of what passes these days for ‘Christian Nationalism.’ These toxic ideologies are a threat to the dignity of the human person. Tolkien is by no means exempt from his own parochialisms, but he is highly aware of how technology poses a risk to individual souls and the soul of a civilization. Pope Leo’s echo of Gandalf is part of a genuine battle cry for us to choose—right now—a civilization of love.”
What might Pope Leo and Tolkien be saying about literature, history and civic responsibility here?
“The Lord of the Rings is one of the great post-Great War elegies for England. It is a profound testimony about the possibilities of human action in a world where that action seems futile. How does a person deal with hopelessness? How does one deal with despair? How does one act ethically and morally in the face of global disaster? You couldn’t find a passage in Harry Potter that carries the same ethical weight and call to responsibility that Tolkien’s work espouses. Hundreds of millions of copies of LOTR have sold over almost 75 years. I think the inclusion of Tolkien in the encyclical is going to attract people’s attention and get them talking and reading. And I think Leo knows that.
“Leo also says in the encyclical that ceding our ways of thinking and feeling to AI is ‘renouncing the adventure of life’, in all its complexities. Outsourcing that adventure to AI is to surrender to a machine that trucks in averageness. AI averages data and languages and ideas and spits them out; that’s what it does. Reading and learning, like life itself, are an adventure. This is why Leo explicitly advocates in the letter for a renewed commitment to education. Reading literature is not just a practice for being human; it is being human. The best answer to how we can curb AI’s excesses is to become as human as we possibly can be.”
Will you be teaching more Tolkien seminars upon your return to Holy Cross?
Absolutely. I can't conceive of my teaching career without Tolkien. I think he's more needed now than ever.
