He calls him “The Pope of the new era”. Juan Vicente Boo, one of the most prestigious and experienced Vaticanists, has just presented a biographical essay -published by Espasa- on Leo XIV, who on May 18 completed his first year of pontificate. The new era mentioned by Boo is the one marked by the Artificial Intelligence (IA).
The author explains that by taking as his name that of Leo XIV already said a lot. Thus, if Leo XIII faced “the social question” during the Industrial Revolution; his successor is situated in a new era marked by Artificial Intelligence, in what he describes as a “Rerum Novarum 2.0”, in reference to the Encyclical that initiated the social doctrine of the Church.
Juan Vicente Boo (A Pobra do Caramiñal, La Coruña, 1954) has been a correspondent for the ABC newspaper in the Vatican for twenty years. At the presentation of the book in Madrid, he said: “I have a hunch that Leo XIV is going to be a giant Pope”. A statement to keep in mind. His book, “The Pope of the New Age”, by Espasa, is the fruit of a profound study of Robert Prevost, starting from a careful examination of his past, as an Augustinian superior, as a missionary, as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, the merits that led him to be one of the most trusted persons of Pope Francis. “You have to discover the person of the Pope,” says the author. He conveys this to the reader.
Boo underlines the continuity between Pope Francis and Leo XIV and, in this sense, he points to the Second Vatican Council as another axis of the current pontificate.
The essay provides incisive and accessible considerations on geopolitics, in an international context where Leo XIV is concerned about peace in Ukraine, in Palestine, in Iran, among other points in conflict today, in “a world on fire”.
The analysis of AI has special weight in the book: “it will be a milestone of his magisterium,” said Boo. He commented that “the Pope is so methodical and reflective that the encyclical arrives almost a year after its inception”. He explained that the mathematician, theologian and canonist Pope began to work on the subject years ago and in his year of Pontificate he has dedicated a public intervention to the subject every month.
