Jesuit Institute South Africa

22/06/2026

A wonderful chance to nourish your spiritual journey and learn skills that will enable you to facilitate groups of people interested in Ignatian spirituality. Join this in-person series and discover more about image of God, discernment of spirits and other Ignatian practices.

18/06/2026

Bowing Before Dignity
by Simon Taylor

The recent images of migrants gathering in temporary shelters in Durban and elsewhere in South Africa have prompted reflection across the region. Families who left their homes in Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and other African countries in search of safety, work and opportunity now face uncertainty, fear and, for some, the difficult decision to return home.

For many observers, these events raise political questions. For Christians, however, they first raise a spiritual question: How do we see the other?

Pope Leo XIV offered a profound response when addressing migrants:
"Dear migrants, before I say any other word to you, I want to bow before your dignity. You are not numbers or case files. You are people—with a family and a home left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to scorn."

His words invite us to pause. They challenge us to move beyond political categories and social labels and to encounter the human person standing before us.

In the Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius encourages us to see the world through the eyes of Christ. Such a perspective requires more than observation. It requires contemplation. It asks us to look deeply enough to recognise God's presence in the lives of others.

Migration has become one of the defining realities of our age. Across the globe, millions of people leave familiar places in search of security, livelihood and hope. Yet behind every movement of people lies a deeply human story: a mother seeking a future for her children, a father searching for work, a student pursuing education, a family longing for peace.

The temptation of modern societies is to reduce people to categories. We speak of migrants, refugees, foreigners, documented and undocumented persons. While such language may serve administrative purposes, it can obscure the reality that each person possesses an irreducible dignity that comes from God alone.
The Christian tradition insists that human dignity is not earned. It does not depend upon citizenship, economic contribution, ethnicity or legal status. It is inherent because every person is created in the image and likeness of God.

This conviction runs throughout Scripture. Israel is repeatedly reminded to remember its own experience of exile and displacement. The people of God are commanded to welcome and protect the stranger because they themselves were once strangers in Egypt (Exodus 22:21; Leviticus 19:33–34; Deuteronomy 10:19). In the New Testament, Jesus identifies himself explicitly with those on the margins of society.

"I was a stranger, and you welcomed me" (Matthew 25:35).

These words have particular significance for the Society of Jesus. The Jesuit tradition has long sought to accompany those who find themselves on the margins of society. Whether through education, pastoral ministry, social justice work or the accompaniment of refugees and migrants, Jesuits have been called to encounter Christ where human dignity is most vulnerable. Accompaniment begins with presence.

Before solutions, before programmes and before policies, there is the simple act of being with another person. Ignatian spirituality teaches us that transformation often begins not with action but with attention. To truly see another person is already to affirm their humanity.

Pope Leo's invitation to "bow before your dignity" is therefore deeply Ignatian. It is an act of reverence. It recognises the presence of God in the other. It calls us to humility before the mystery of another human life.

Such reverence is especially important in societies marked by inequality, fear and social fragmentation. Economic hardship can create suspicion. Competition for scarce resources can fuel division. Yet the Gospel consistently resists the logic of exclusion. It calls believers towards solidarity rather than separation, encounter rather than hostility.

In the African context, this vision finds resonance in Ubuntu. The belief that our humanity is bound together reflects a truth that Christianity has long proclaimed: we are created for relationship. Human flourishing is never achieved in isolation.

The challenge before us is therefore not merely political or economic. It is fundamentally moral and spiritual. The question is not simply how societies manage migration. The deeper question is whether we can recognise the dignity of those whom circumstances have made vulnerable.

Pope Leo XIV reminds us where such recognition begins.
Not with judgment. Not with fear. Not with ideology. But with reverence.
To bow before another person's dignity is to acknowledge that every human life is sacred. It is to recognise that before we are citizens of nations, we are members of one human family.

In a world increasingly marked by division and displacement, this may be one of the most important spiritual practices of our time. To see. To recognise. To accompany. And ultimately, to discover in the face of the stranger the face of Christ.

16/06/2026

Moral responsibility in the age of automation
by Sarah-Leah Pimentel

Youth Month is celebrated in South Africa in June. Youth Day is commemorated annually on 16 June to honour the courage and sacrifices of the 1976 Youth Uprising. 2026 marks the 50th Anniversary thereof.

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with my godson. He is in that exciting and agonising phase of life where he is thinking about the career he wants to pursue. During our meal, he expressed his interest in pursuing a specific trade. This was a very different direction from our last conversation when he was thinking about academic studies. My response was reactive rather than pondered: “What a great idea. You’re future-proofing your income prospects against AI!”

My godson looked at me quizzically. I don’t think he expected that response. Perhaps he thought I would continue to press him to go to university. He also knows that I work in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. Why did I not suggest technology studies?

Inasmuch as I’m excited by AI, I remain sceptical about whether its threats outweigh its benefits. I have implemented AI in my daily work. I use it to build workflow pipelines, perform routine calculations, summarise tedious content and refine my overly verbose emails. AI has made me more efficient and has allowed our company to standardise and streamline its operations. I am constantly in awe of the advancements it has brought to medicine and of the new insights from previously unseen patterns or connections in large datasets.

My fear, however, is that transnational AI companies are selling us the dream of future potential while remaining silent about the human, societal, and environmental costs. Thousands of jobs have already been lost to a few lines of code, particularly in the technology, financial, and media sectors. Computer vision algorithms can select military targets, often with devastating consequences. We saw this recently when a US military strike mistook a girls’ school for a military base in Iran, allegedly because of a geospatial data error. The human need for water and energy will increasingly compete with the massive data-processing centres that are the lifeblood of AI. Finally, the ethical dimension of potentially biased and skewed algorithms trained on data that disproportionately represents the knowledge paradigms of highly industrialised nations risks excluding billions of people in the Global South from the benefits of AI.

Pope Leo XIV, in his first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, has deliberately chosen a title that prioritises the intrinsic value and purpose of a “magnificent humanity” over technological fascination. He reminds us of the inherent God-given dignity of each human person. Technology exists to complement human initiatives and creativity, not to supplant them.

The encyclical reminds us that considerations about the common good, the option for the poor and marginalised, the equitable distribution of resources, and the protection of the environment require human judgement and discernment. Pope Leo warns us that while machines can detect patterns, we cannot abdicate responsibility for moral decisions that affect the most vulnerable, the very people that technological developments often overlook.

My biggest fear is that we too easily trust AI outputs without understanding how the algorithms that run them actually work, the biases they contain, and how they can be manipulated by human engineers for evil. Quick answers to complex questions too easily deter us from thinking critically about their application to our own unique contexts. In a quasi-humorous incident, the South African Department of Communications and Digital Technologies released its draft of the South African National AI Policy last month. It was almost immediately withdrawn when it was revealed to have been AI-generated and replete with hallucinations.

If our government seems prepared to enact a national AI framework by unthinkingly lifting an AI suggestion, they have already failed on moral and responsible decision-making. Have our elected officials considered the impact of AI on our local job market in an already depressed economy? Have they considered the range of skills that need to be taught at schools and tertiary institutions to equip the next generation of learners to thrive in a technology-first mindset? Have they weighed up these decisions against the reality that thousands of schools still lack a reliable electrical supply, let alone fully equipped computer labs?

These unanswered questions should prompt us to pause. We are still in time to shape our future: not by denying that the technological revolution is here but by determining the gaps that AI can fill without sacrificing human livelihoods.

As I finished up dinner with my godson, I reminded him that none of us can see the future. But we can prepare for it in faith through prayer and discernment, accompanied by hope and confidence that God now invites his generation to use the age into which it has been called, with its opportunities and challenges, to ensure that the technology they will master will be used for the benefit of the whole of society. I certainly have far more hope in our youth than I do in an AI agent!

11/06/2026

Magnifica Humanitas. The AI Encyclical, which has shaken the tech giants with its urgent and timely message
by Justine Limpitlaw

I don’t think I have ever seen so many non-Catholics, indeed so many entirely irreligious lawyers, policy wonks and tech geeks, refer to and be challenged by Church teachings as they have by Magnifica Humanitas. On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence[1]; the encyclical letter published by Pope Leo XIV on 15 May 2026.

It has sparked an astonishing amount of secular reaction at a time when the entire world, left and right, developed and developing countries, are starting to wake up to the existential challenges posed by AI.

In the past few weeks, the following alarms have been sounded:

Anthropic, one of the largest US AI developers (including Claude), has said[2] that its latest, most advanced systems are beginning to show signs they “could escape human control”. It is said its AI models “are dramatically speeding up the rate at which they teach themselves, removing human input from the process”. Anthropic is proposing a slowdown in building such systems and is proposing global rules to contain them. This followed an April announcement by Anthropic that one of its new models was skilled at detecting software vulnerabilities and could be weaponised by people who wanted to carry out cyberattacks[3].

Anthropic’s warnings resulted, just last week, in the notoriously anti-regulation US President Trump signing a new executive order, “Promoting Advanced AI Innovation and Security”[4], giving the US government access to new AI models for 30 days prior to commercial release to assess any risks they pose.
Anthropic is not an outlier among AI companies in calling for regulation, as OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT) has now also said that “democratic governments, and not AI companies alone, should determine the rules and safeguards” for AI technologies[5].

While AI is dominated by US and Chinese tech firms, they are not the only countries wrestling with AI regulation. South Africa’s own feeble attempt descended into ridicule and embarrassment for the hapless Department of Communications and Digital Technologies when it turned out that its Draft National AI Policy[6] was itself an AI-generated product and was immediately withdrawn.

The key challenge is how to harness the societal good that can come from AI, including, for example, using AI to develop a vaccine for whole families of viruses akin to the coronavirus, which has successfully passed its first human trial.[7] At the same time, avoiding the very real societal harms that can arise from AI use, which has been the subject of a 2025 civil lawsuit against OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which allegedly encouraged a teen to successfully commit su***de[8].

The Magnifica Humanitas is a dense, forty-page read, grounded in the “Social Doctrine of the Church”, which is made up of various Papal Encyclicals since Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. One gets the sense of the teachings over the ages culminating in this guiding of the Church, indeed of the whole of humanity, to meet today’s challenge: the pitting of people against technology and the AI-driven worship of efficiency.

The Encyclical sets out the three foundations of the Social Doctrine[9]:
the human person made in the image of the Triune God
the equal dignity of all human persons
the supreme value of human rights,

and the principles of the Social Doctrine[10]:
the common good
the universal destination of goods
subsidiarity
solidarity
social justice
integral human development.

In my view, it summarises the task at hand with regard to AI as follows[11]:

Justice demands that we prevent the emergence of new forms of exclusion and deprivation of freedoms: individuals and peoples hindered or denied access to basic technologies, communities exposed to invasive surveillance and social groups penalised by opaque algorithms that perpetuate prejudice and discrimination. In the digital age, a just social order guarantees everyone equal access to opportunities, protects the youngest and weakest members of society, combats hate and misinformation and subjects the use of data and technology to public oversight, so that the guiding principle is not solely profit but the dignity of every person and the common good of all people.

Pope Leo warns of a modern-day Tower of Babel that will eventuate if AI is allowed to grow as a construction “that is grandiose, yet fundamentally dehumanising”[12].

The final chapter[13] of the Encyclical is a template of the key challenges and tasks. Essentially, the need to counter the prevailing culture of power and the normalisation of war which has stemmed from the crisis of multilateralism resulting in a multi-polar world “with a prevailing sense of mistrust”.[14] And its replacement with what it calls the “civilisation of love” which “will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanisation”[15]. In particular, Pope Leo calls for dialogue, diplomacy and multilateralism, and for a reinvigoration of international bodies such as the United Nations. He says that “diplomacy must be capable of operating effectively in this new environment, negotiating shared regulations on the use of digital technologies, in order to protect civilisations and the most vulnerable from ‘invisible’ yet real forms of violence”[16].

[1] https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
[2] Global News Podcast. 5 June 2026 “Anthropic: AI could escape human control” Available at: https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0nqck86
[3] https://red.anthropic.com/2026/mythos-preview/
[4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/promoting-advanced-artificial-intelligence-innovation-and-security/
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/04/podcasts/the-daily/trump-ai-regulation.html
[6] www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202604/54477gen3880.pdf
[7] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260605023357.htm
[8] https://www.techpolicy.press/breaking-down-the-lawsuit-against-openai-over-teens-su***de/
[9] In Chapter Two – paragraphs 46-59.
[10] In Chapter Two – paragraphs 60-85.
[11] In Chapter Two – paragraph 80.
[12] In Chapter Three – paragraph 129.
[13] Chapter 5 “The Culture of Power and the Civilisation of Love”.
[14] Chapter 5 – paragraph 201.
[15] Chapter 5 – paragraph 213.
[16] Chapter 5 – paragraph 225.

Photo credit: https://theway.ie/irish-bishops-reflect-on-pope-leo-s-encyclical-magnifica-humanitas/

04/06/2026

Superpower su***de
by Chris Chatteris SJ

‘Superpower su***de’ is a striking phrase used by the historian of totalitarianism, Professor Timothy Snyder. He argues the United States is in the process of committing ‘superpower su***de’, thanks to the Trump administration’s geopolitical blunders. Two egregious examples are the unwinnable war with Iran and the inexplicable alienation of its traditional allies in Europe.

It occurs to me that the United States is not alone. Witness the fatal self-harm that Putin’s Russia is inflicting upon itself, by hubristically taking on Ukraine in a war which Russia is losing and which is destroying its economy.

The parallelisms between the USA and the Russian Federation are instructive. Both have had the image of their overwhelming military might humiliatingly trashed by lesser but highly motivated and ingenious adversaries. This has been a stupendously costly lesson in dollars for the United States and in rubles and recruits for Russia.

One hopes this is a sobering lesson for other would-be aggressors. I imagine that China’s Xi Jinping is paying close attention as he ponders an invasion of Taiwan. What he notices happening in the Strait of Hormuz and the Black Sea must surely give him pause.

Snyder also mentions an economic ingredient to the US su***de overdose, namely the attempt to put the clock back on energy. One of the most unbelievable pieces of news recently has to be the Trump administration’s payment of over a billion dollars to a French energy company not to build a planned wind farm in the US.

Incredible, but there is a logic to this lunacy. It follows from the administration’s ‘drill baby drill’ policy, and it is also an expression of Trump’s animus against renewables and his quaint belief that he can leverage the US’s leadership in the extraction of shale oil to maintain global economic dominance. The saying attributed to Sheikh Ahmed Yamani comes to mind: “The Stone Age didn’t come to an end because we ran out of stones!”

Putin, too, made the mistake of overreliance on hydrocarbons. He built up a vast war chest through the sale of oil and gas, and he calculated that it would be sufficient to fund a short ‘special military operation’. However, after almost five years, warfare itself has evolved to the point where long-range drones have made significant portions of what is a very inflammable Russian industry vulnerable to attack. Hence, that which fuels the Russian economy is literally going up in smoke.

All wars are horrible, and they often lead to further wars. Obviously, therefore, it would have been better if neither of the two had ever happened. However, it can be argued that there are a few unintended consequences of these two conflicts which offer humankind sobering and useful historical lessons.

Firstly, annexing territory in the face of determined resistance is extremely difficult in the age of drones. Israel is just beginning to discover this in Lebanon. The second is that even the greatest superpower needs allies. The third is that if superpowers use energy as a gambit in waging war, then those affected by scarcity and price rises will naturally seek alternatives.

This double su***de of superpowers might just make the world a safer and greener place. We can but hope and pray.

04/06/2026

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03/06/2026

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02/06/2026

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01/06/2026

The Jesuit Institute is excited to launch the Living Theology 2026 series, "Our Father? The Shadow of Father" with guest speakers David Neuhaus SJ and Kgaugelo Habyane.

When the image of a father is shaped by absence, neglect, or dysfunction, what
happens to our understanding of God?

This three-day Living Theology series is a journey into the history, the wounds, and
the reimagining of fatherhood. Together, we will explore how Scripture, especially the language of “Our Father” has shaped our image of God, and how that image meets the lived realities of fatherhood today.

Through reflection, dialogue, and engagement with Scripture, the Living Theology
creates space to acknowledge both personal and collective woundedness, while
opening pathways toward forgiveness, reconciliation, and integration.

We will explore fatherhood not only as a biological role, but as a social, spiritual, and
communal responsibility. What does it mean to reimagine fatherhood and our relationship with God for the next generation?

This series will benefit those wrestling with their own father-wounds and
struggling to relate to God, especially as Father. It will also be valuable for parents,
guardians, and caregivers seeking to better understand the relational, social, and
biblical dimensions of parenting.

Those involved in youth formation will benefit greatly, as this series can serve as a
resource for supporting young people, particularly those growing up without
consistent father figures.

For more information contact [email protected] or visit the website www.jesuitinstitute.org.za

01/06/2026

Register here https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/r3__4J_BSlakD1LuC-qbEw