Artificial intelligence is but one of the ‘new things’ of our time. Just as in 1891 there was *Rerum Novarum*, about which Leo XIII wrote. At the heart of *Magnifica Humanitas*, Prevost actually places ‘the Social Doctrine of the Church’, which he regards as ‘a living body of truth’. The Pope sees no conflict between the encyclical of his namesake, who condemned the exploitation of children in factories but above all defended private property against the capital-labour conflict, and *Fratelli tutti*, in which Francis instead downgrades property to a ‘secondary natural right’, and *Laudato si’*, where he maintains that we have received the earth on loan not from our parents but ‘from our children’. There would also have been continuity between Pius XI, who had ‘Mit Brendenner Sorge’ – a condemnation of the idolatry of Race, the People and the State – read out in German churches and who, on his deathbed, was preparing an encyclical against Nazism, and his successor Pacelli, who, as Pope, never uttered Hitler’s name even in the face of evidence of the extermination camps, whilst in 1949 he excommunicated Italian communists and trade unionists guilty of seeking to requisition ‘uncultivated and poorly cultivated land’. ...

Contrary to the hopes of those who spreading rumors about his possible resignation, Pope Francis died in action. The way one could expect from a man such as he was, a fighter steadfast in his convictions in defense of the common good, of justice, and of the poorest on earth, he feared nothing and no one. Never afraid of expressing his political views – sharp and lapidarily succinct, as in the case of “NATO barking at Russia” – he was endowed with clear-sightedness that professional historians or literary scholars have rarely been able to match. So that it is no coincidence that the Palestinian people—victims of the most brutal and deliberate massacre of this century—have always considered him a faithful friend, whose evening phone calls to the catholic Parish in Gaza were nothing less than an unceasing appeal to humanity to put an end to the ongoing martyrdom. Such as was his latest walkabout. ...