In an age of AI, Pope looks for “artisans of hope.”

In sounding this call to both disarm and to build, Leo turns to “twentieth-century Catholic author” JRR Tolkien. Though he can’t quite bring himself to say that he’s quoting Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, that’s exactly what’s happening.

(The encyclical says only that the quote comes from “the words of a protagonist in one of [Tolkien’s] novels.” Though Pope Francis previously spoke of Tolkien’s work, this appears to be the first time that Tolkien has ever been quoted in the highest levels of the church’s official doctrinal publications.)

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.