A Reflection to Our Lady

On Reading Magnifica Humanitas

My Hail Mary Diary 54

Holy Mother,

I am writing to you because I do not yet have words large enough for what happened today, and you have always been the one who keeps my words for me until I can carry them myself.

This morning the Holy Father released his first encyclical. He has called it Magnifica Humanitas — on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. I read it in one sitting. And then I read it again. And somewhere in the second reading, the tears came and would not stop. Not tears of sorrow. Tears of joy. The kind that come when something you have been praying for, without knowing you were praying for it, arrives.

I am leaving for Rome in one week. The trip was planned months ago, before any of this. And now I will be walking into St. Peter’s Square carrying this reflection to you, and his letter to all of us, and the question both of them are placing in my hands.

Let me tell you what he said, Mother. And let me tell you what I heard.

Two Cities

He begins with two cities, drawn from Scripture.

The first is Babel. The tower the children of men built on the plain of Shinar — not to glorify, not to serve, but, as the text says, to make a name for themselves. And you know what happened. The languages confused. The understanding broken. The tower abandoned. The people scattered.

The second is Jerusalem, rebuilt by Nehemiah. The city in ruins, the walls collapsed, the gates burned. And Nehemiah did not arrive with a master plan. He fasted. He prayed. He walked the ruins in silence. And then he called the families together and gave each one its own section of the wall — men, women, priests, artisans, mothers, daughters, sons — each carrying her portion.

The Holy Father asks us, Mother, the only question that matters in this hour:

“Are we building Babel, or are we rebuilding Jerusalem?”

I sat with this question for a long time. I sat with it the way you sat at the foot of the Cross. Not arguing. Not solving. Just present to it.

What He Sees

The Holy Father is not a man of soft words. He named what so many in power refuse to name.

He said that never has humanity had such power over itself. That artificial intelligence and the technologies surrounding it are not neutral — they carry the soul of those who build and fund them. He said that decisions that once belonged to nations and to citizens now belong increasingly to private hands, with resources greater than those of many governments.

And then, drawing on Guardini, he said the sentence that pierced me:

“Contemporary man has not been trained to use power well.”

Mother, I read that line and I thought of every boardroom I have ever been in. Every founder I have advised. Every brilliant young engineer I have watched build something with no formation in why it should be built, or for whom, or what it would do to the soul of the world.

We have built the tower. We have not become wise enough to live in it.

This is what your Son was warning of when he wept over Jerusalem. This is what you sang of in the Magnificat — that the mighty would be cast down from their thrones, and the lowly lifted up. The Holy Father is singing your song in a new key.

The Refusal

And then, Mother, the encyclical does what only the Church can do at her best. It refuses.

It refuses to let the human person be reduced. To data. To performance. To output. To a cost line. To an externality.

The Holy Father writes: every human person possesses an infinite dignity, inalienably grounded in his or her very being. Not earned. Not produced. Not justified by what we accomplish. Given.

This is the truth you have always known. This is why the angel’s greeting to you mattered — because before you had done anything, you were already full of grace. Before. Always before. That is the order. That is the truth no algorithm can revoke and no efficiency can erase.

If I carry only one thing from this encyclical into the rest of my life, let it be this. That dignity is not earned. It is given. And what is given by God cannot be taken away by men, no matter how clever their machines.

Why I Believe Women Will Hear This First

Mother, you know I have been writing about this for years. About the leadership our civilization has always carried under the feminine name. About Nuwa, who mended the sky. About Sophia, who discerned what should and should not be done. About Athena, who built institutions that endure. About Arctoria, who guarded the world of her grandchildren’s grandchildren.

They are not you. But they are, each in their own way, echoes of what you carried first and most fully. The mender. The discerner. The one who held the future in her body and did not let the world destroy it.

When the Holy Father describes the rebuilding of Jerusalem — not by force, not by a single architect, but by many families each taking her section of the wall — I hear you. I hear the kind of leadership the world has forgotten how to honor, and that women have been quietly carrying through every century, in every kitchen, every classroom, every hospital ward, every refugee camp, every boardroom where someone had the courage to ask whether profit was worth what it cost.

“Jerusalem is rebuilt the way you mend the world. Not by a single hand. Through devotion. Through patience. Through honoring each one’s section of the wall.”

Mother, this is not the conqueror’s path. This is the menders’ path. This is the leadership our civilization most desperately needs in the age of artificial intelligence.

And I believe — I truly believe — that women are being called in this hour. Not because we are better. Because we have not yet been fully convinced that the conqueror’s path is the only valid one. That advantage is to be used. Not for ourselves. For the world your Son loved enough to die for.

What I Will Carry Into Rome

In one week, Mother, I will be in St. Peter’s Square. I will look up at the dome and I will think of Nehemiah walking the ruins by night. I will think of all the women, named and unnamed, who have rebuilt walls the world did not even notice were falling. I will think of you, standing at the foot of the Cross, refusing to look away.

And I will carry these things:

That technology is never neutral, and the soul of those who build it becomes the soul of what is built.

That power has migrated, and the dignity of the human person must be defended in the new places where decisions are made.

That subsidiarity is not a technical term. It is the truth that every family, every community, every soul has been given a section of the wall.

That no efficiency, no progress, no profit, no power justifies treating a human being as a means.

That the work is shared, and the work is now.

Mother, I am going to Rome. I am going on behalf of every woman who has ever felt small in a room full of men who knew everything except the one thing that mattered. I am going on behalf of every founder and leader trying to build something that does not betray the human person. I am going on behalf of every child not yet born into the world we are now designing.

Help me to remain small enough to hear, and brave enough to build.

Help me to know which section of the wall is mine.

Help me, when I am tempted by Babel, to remember Jerusalem.

And help me, always, to write these words back to you, so I do not forget what is true.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Pray for us, your daughters, who are building the Golden Age. Amen.

Read the encyclical: http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

My Hail Mary Diary is where I will share the stories, the memories, the ideas, and the pilgrimages that the book could only begin to hold. A new piece, every single day!

Jing Zhao Cesarone is a civilizational leader and global impact architect exploring the invisible forces that shape leadership, humanity, and the future. She is the Founder and CEO of the Global CSR Foundation and the author of Women’s Civilizational Leadership: A New Paradigm for the Golden Age of Humanity, an Amazon #1 New Release in General Gender Studies and Top 10 in Social Policy. Available at www.jingzhaocesarone.com