Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (May 2026), was written to address artificial intelligence — but its deepest concerns are the same ones that animate the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda: human dignity, justice, and a future where all people to thrive, not just the powerful few.
Faith, advocacy, and the Sustainable Development Goals are not separate worlds—they converge in a single conviction: human dignity must shape the future we are building, and the SDGs are one of the key global expressions of that moral responsibility. For those who work at the United Nations and in faith-based service, this means that belief is never private and advocacy is never abstract; both are called to engage the urgent task of ensuring that global development remains truly human.
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, offers a timely reflection for all who work for justice and human development. At its heart is a fundamental question: How do we ensure that progress remains truly human? The encyclical calls us to safeguard human dignity, promote the common good, protect the dignity of work, seek truth and build peace in a rapidly changing world.
This question resonates deeply with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The 2030 Agenda, adopted by all UN Member States in 2015, was conceived as a shared commitment to people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership. (Sustainable Development Goals) Yet, as we enter the final years before 2030, the distance between our aspirations and the reality experienced by millions of people remains profound.
The latest UN assessment reminds us that progress is uneven and insufficient: only a little over one-third of assessed SDG targets are on track or making moderate progress, while many are advancing too slowly and others are moving backwards. (UNSD)
These statistics are not simply numbers.
Behind every target are people: a family living in poverty, a child without access to quality education, a person experiencing homelessness, a migrant searching for safety, an Indigenous community defending its land and culture, a worker struggling for dignity, or a young person wondering whether there is a future worth believing in.
From the grassroots to the global, this is where faith and advocacy meet.
Faith gives us the conviction that every human person possesses an incomparable dignity. Advocacy gives us the responsibility to make that conviction visible in society—in policies, laws, budgets, institutions and international commitments.
Our presence at the United Nations therefore cannot be separated from what happens at the grassroots.
The stories encountered in communities give a human face to global issues. The voices of people who are often unheard can reach international spaces. And international commitments can, in turn, become instruments for change when they are brought back to communities and translated into concrete action.
This is the bridge between the local and the global.
It is also why the SDGs remain important. They provide a common language through which governments, civil society, faith-based organizations and people can work together. They are not a substitute for faith, nor do they express the fullness of the Christian vision. But they offer an important space for collaboration in pursuit of goals that touch deeply on human dignity: ending poverty and hunger, ensuring health and education, promoting equality, protecting creation, building peaceful societies and strengthening partnerships.
Advocacy as an expression of faith
For people rooted in the Gospel, advocacy is more than speaking on behalf of others. It is a way of standing with others.
It means bringing the experience of those at the margins into places where decisions are made. It means asking difficult questions when policies exclude the most vulnerable. It means reminding the international community that development cannot be measured only by economic growth or technological advancement.
“Magnifica Humanitas” offers a powerful reminder of this. In the midst of extraordinary technological transformation, Pope Leo XIV asks us not to lose sight of what makes us human. The question is ultimately not simply what technology can do, but what kind of humanity we are building through the choices we make.
The same question can be asked of the SDGs:
What kind of world are we building?
Who is included?
Who is still being left behind?
And what are we willing to change to ensure that no one is forgotten, left behind?
The final years of the 2030 Agenda is a call to renewed commitment.
The challenges are immense, but so is the possibility of collaboration.
The Church, religious congregations, NGOs and other faith-based organizations have a particular contribution to make. We are often present where global statistics become personal realities. We accompany people over time. We listen. We serve. We advocate. And we can bring the wisdom of lived experience into international conversations.
Our vocation invites us to hold together compassion and justice, service and advocacy, prayer and action.
The UN can become one of the places where this commitment takes shape—not because we have all the answers, but because we can help ensure that the voices of those who are most vulnerable are part of the conversation.
The final years of the SDGs therefore invite us to ask not only whether the world will achieve every target by 2030, but what kind of solidarity we will demonstrate along the way.
Faith gives us hope.
The SDGs give us a framework for collective action.
Advocacy gives us a voice.
And the people we encounter give us the reason.
As we move toward 2030, may our presence in international spaces remain rooted in the reality of those we serve. May our advocacy be informed by compassion and strengthened by justice. And may our faith continue to challenge us to see, in every person and every community, not a statistic or a beneficiary, but a human being whose dignity must be protected and whose voice deserves to be heard.