Cathleen Chopra-McGowan, Author at America Magazine

This is Pieter Bruegel’s 1563 painting of the "Tower of Babel." In "Magnifica Humanitas," Pope Leo XIV writes that humanity "is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together." (OSV News photo/courtesy Kunsthistorisches Museum)

What ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ misunderstood about The Tower of Babel, Nehemiah and A.I.

by Cathleen Chopra-McGowan June 15, 2026June 15, 2026

The encyclical presents Babel and Nehemiah as moral opposites, but the biblical traditions themselves resist such neat binaries.