leaving to those who come after us a land clean for the tilling
In a document that arrives at the intersection of faith, power, and the digital age, Pope Leo XIV has issued an encyclical calling artificial intelligence back to the service of human dignity — invoking, with apparent deliberateness, the Catholic imagination of J.R.R. Tolkien to challenge those who would wield technology as an instrument of dominion. The gesture is not merely literary: Palantir, the surveillance company named after Tolkien's seeing-stones and shaped by Peter Thiel's vision of a Silicon Valley ruling civilization, stands as the encyclical's unspoken but unmistakable counterpart. Where the Pope quotes Gandalf on stewardship and restraint, the same page of Tolkien's text warns that the Palantir can be made to deceive — a proximity that reads less like coincidence than like a theological argument delivered in the language of myth.
- Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, lands as a direct moral challenge to the concentration of technological power, condemning mass surveillance, autonomous weapons, and the displacement of human labor and connection.
- Palantir — the surveillance giant named after Tolkien's all-seeing stones, led by Peter Thiel and ideologically committed to a Silicon Valley-led civilizational order — represents precisely the vision the encyclical refuses to bless.
- The Vatican's own AI advisor had already declared Thiel's trajectory a threat to civil coexistence, and Palantir's recent manifesto calling for Western technological supremacy sharpened the confrontation weeks before the Pope's document appeared.
- The encyclical's citation of Tolkien is being read online not as decoration but as precision: the Gandalf passage on responsible stewardship sits only paragraphs from the author's own warning that the Palantir can be manipulated to distort truth.
- What is landing is a rare moment in which theological authority, literary tradition, and the politics of artificial intelligence converge — the Church staking a position not at the margins of the AI debate, but at its moral center.
Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, places artificial intelligence at the center of a moral argument: that technology must serve human dignity, not concentrate power in the hands of states or corporations. The document rejects the elimination of jobs, the erosion of human relationships, and the development of autonomous weapons systems. Its reception has been swift and wide — but the detail drawing the most attention is the Pope's choice to anchor his argument in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien.
No company makes the encyclical's stakes more concrete than Palantir. Named after the seeing-stones of Tolkien's Middle-earth — objects of vast, manipulable vision — the firm is devoted to mass surveillance and data collection. Its most prominent figure, Peter Thiel, has delivered lectures near the Vatican on the coming of the Antichrist and has been a patron of American Vice President J.D. Vance, a Catholic convert. The Vatican's AI advisor, Paolo Benanti, wrote in March that Thiel's direction poses a challenge to the foundations of civil coexistence. Weeks earlier, Palantir had released a manifesto — echoing the arguments of CEO Alex Karp's book The Techno-Republic — that divides civilizations into vital and failing, dismisses pluralism, and envisions Silicon Valley leading the West in near-military competition with China. It is, in almost every respect, the inverse of what Magnifica Humanitas demands.
The encyclical's most discussed passage quotes Tolkien directly, naming him as 'a Catholic writer of the twentieth century.' The words belong to Gandalf, spoken during the final war council of The Return of the King: a call to tend what lies within reach, root out the evil one can see, and leave the world clean for those who follow. The Pope presents this as the proper human relationship to power and time.
What makes the citation remarkable is its location in Tolkien's text. On the very same page, just paragraphs earlier, Gandalf offers the only reference to the Palantir in that entire chapter — warning that the seeing-stones cannot lie outright, but can be directed to show only what their master chooses, and made to mislead those who look into them. The Pope's decision to draw from this precise passage, in this precise chapter, does not appear accidental. It is a rebuke shaped like a literary allusion: a challenge to the company and the man who have claimed Tolkien's mythology as their own, delivered from the oldest institution in the Western world.
Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical this week, a document titled Magnifica Humanitas that takes artificial intelligence as its central concern. The text argues that AI systems must serve human dignity rather than concentrate power in the hands of governments or technology companies. It insists that technological progress cannot justify the elimination of jobs or the replacement of human connection. It declares autonomous weapons systems an unacceptable risk. The document has drawn swift reaction across social media and in print, and among the most remarked-upon elements is the Pope's invocation of J.R.R. Tolkien, the twentieth-century Catholic writer, to ground his argument about technology's proper place in human life.
Of all the companies working in artificial intelligence, none embodies the inverse of what the Pope demands quite like Palantir. The firm takes its name directly from the seeing-stones in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings—the Palantir, those objects of power and vision that allowed their wielders to perceive across vast distances. Palantir itself is dedicated to mass surveillance and the comprehensive harvesting of data. The company's most visible figure is Peter Thiel, a man not unfamiliar with religious matters. Thiel has been an open patron of J.D. Vance, now the American vice president and a convert to Catholicism, and he has spent time in Rome near the Vatican itself, delivering lectures on the coming of the Antichrist. The relationship between the Holy See and Thiel is openly hostile. Paolo Benanti, the Vatican's advisor on artificial intelligence, wrote in March that Thiel's trajectory represents "a challenge to the very foundations of civil coexistence." Weeks before that assessment, Palantir had made global headlines by releasing a manifesto that divides civilizations into vital and dysfunctional categories, attacks what it calls "empty pluralism," calls on Silicon Valley to lead the United States, and speaks of preparing to compete with China in nearly military terms. The manifesto, and the book it draws from—The Techno-Republic, published last year by Palantir CEO Alex Karp—stands as the perfect inversion of everything Magnifica Humanitas demands: a Silicon Valley ruling the world with an iron hand, from a position of intellectual and military superiority.
The passage that has generated the most attention online appears in the middle of the encyclical. The Pope quotes Tolkien directly, citing what he describes as "a Catholic writer of the twentieth century, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien," who through one of his characters expressed humanity's true responsibility: "It is not for us to master all the tides of the world, but to do what lies in our power for the good of the days in which we live, rooting out the evil in the fields that we know, and leaving to those who come after us a land clean for the tilling." The passage comes from The Return of the King, the third volume of the trilogy, specifically from Chapter 9, "The Last Debate." Gandalf speaks these words during the final war council, after the heroes have saved the city of Minas Tirith from siege. They have decided to march toward what seems certain death at the Black Gate of Mordor, a distraction meant to give the hobbits Frodo and Sam a chance to slip into enemy territory and cast the One Ring into the volcano that is its source.
But there is a detail in that same chapter that arrests attention. On the very same page, only paragraphs before Gandalf speaks of stewardship and responsibility, he makes the only reference to the Palantir that appears anywhere in the chapter. He warns that the seeing-stones "do not lie: not even the Lord of Barad-dûr could make them do so. He might perhaps decide what things they should see, or cause them to misinterpret the meaning of what they see." The Pope's choice to cite Tolkien on the question of technology and power, drawing from a passage that sits mere paragraphs away from the author's only mention of how the Palantir can be bent to serve deception, appears far from accidental. It is a rebuke delivered with precision, a theological argument wrapped in literary reference, and a direct challenge to the company and the man who claim Tolkien's imagination as their namesake.
Citas Notables
It is not for us to master all the tides of the world, but to do what lies in our power for the good of the days in which we live, rooting out the evil in the fields that we know, and leaving to those who come after us a land clean for the tilling.— Pope Leo XIV, citing Tolkien's Gandalf in Magnifica Humanitas
A challenge to the very foundations of civil coexistence— Paolo Benanti, Vatican AI advisor, on Peter Thiel's trajectory
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does the Pope cite Tolkien at all? Why not just argue the ethics directly?
Because Tolkien understood something about power that most tech writing doesn't—that the tools we build to see and know can become instruments of domination. The Pope is using Tolkien's own language to say: you named yourselves after these stones, but you've missed what Tolkien actually said about them.
The timing seems deliberate. The manifesto, the book, all of it coming before this encyclical.
Yes. Palantir had just declared openly what they believe—that some civilizations are vital and others dysfunctional, that Silicon Valley should lead. The Pope is responding directly to that claim of superiority. He's saying: no. Stewardship, not dominion.
But Thiel is Catholic now, or at least connected to Catholicism through Vance. Does that complicate things?
It makes it sharper, actually. The Vatican's AI advisor called Thiel's work a threat to civil coexistence. This isn't abstract theology. It's a direct institutional conflict between two visions of what power should do.
The passage about leaving the land clean for those who come after—that's about restraint, isn't it?
Exactly. It's about knowing what you should not do. The Pope is saying: your job is not to optimize everything, not to see everything, not to decide which societies are worth saving. Your job is to do what's in your power without destroying what comes next.
And Palantir does the opposite.
Palantir collects everything, interprets it for power, and builds systems that concentrate decision-making in fewer hands. The Pope is saying that's not stewardship. That's the opposite of stewardship.