The Primatial Archdiocese of Mexico called this Sunday, July 19, for any artificial intelligence regulation to place education and human dignity at its center, not merely technical considerations. The statement appeared in the editorial of the weekly Desde la Fe, drawing on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas.
The statement comes weeks after President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that, following the World Cup, her government will begin designing an AI regulatory framework incorporating the reflections of Pope Leo XIV. The Archdiocese clarified that it does not back any political party and does not seek to replace the work of specialists, but stressed that no public policy will be adequate if it neglects personal formation, as reported by Infobae. The editorial identifies three challenges that regulation must address, drawn from the papal encyclical, and proposes what it calls a renewed educational alliance among government, educational institutions, and families.
The first challenge, the socio-political one, warns that the technological revolution risks widening the gap between those with access to AI tools and the training to use them, and those left behind. The second, the pedagogical challenge, holds that schools must go beyond teaching students how to use tools: they need to form individuals capable of using them responsibly and with critical judgment. The third, the intellectual-sapiential challenge, flags the risk that people grow accustomed to receiving instant answers and lose the capacity to formulate questions, investigate, reflect, and discern. For the Church, this last point is central: without the capacity to ask questions, there is no real learning.
The Church proposed concrete actions: recovering an "attention hygiene" through silence, reading, and reflective study; establishing clear rules for minors' access to digital platforms; demanding greater accountability from technology service providers; and strengthening mechanisms to prevent exploitation and online violence. Mexico's Congress has yet to open legislative debate on artificial intelligence, and the Primatial Archdiocese's voice enters the conversation from an explicitly non-partisan angle.
This article was drafted with artificial intelligence assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor prior to publication.