German chancellor chooses pope’s AI encyclical over pacy potboiler as holiday read
With his popularity at a record low, Friedrich Merz packs the papal guide Magifica humanitas
Summer is normally thought of as the time for pacy potboilers and brain-soothing page-turners – airport reads that wind up sandy and sunscreen-stained. Not so for Friedrich Merz’s holiday reading list.
Germany’s embattled chancellor, who has faced one rough patch after another since taking office 14 months ago, seems to be seeking spiritual guidance this year while putting his feet up.
According to the conservative broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Christian Democratic Union leader is taking Pope Leo’s encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnifica humanitas (Magnificent humanity), on his break.
Introduced by the Guardian in May as “the first major text on safeguarding humankind of his papacy”, the encyclical makes the case for the “most rigorous” ethical constraints on the march of technology, calling AI the biggest threat to humanity.
One of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, Merz tends to be private about matters of belief, so his beach reading speaks volumes.
The historically unpopular 70-year-old politician has described AI as a challenge and a chance for Europe’s top economy after seven years of stagnation, just as he has demanded streamlined EU rules to prevent red tape from snuffing out its potential.
In a speech in April, he said Germany was one of the world’s leading nations in the use of AI, particularly in industry. Merz said he was banking on its power to boost productivity and prosperity as he faces a surge in support for the far right.
Despite the “euphoria” in some circles about how machines can alter the way we live, Merz said many Germans feared AI’s power to eliminate jobs and upend lives.
“The question, however, is not whether we want AI or not,” he said. “AI is here and is already being put to practical use. It is now up to us to decide what happens in this transformation.”
It is perhaps fitting that Merz would choose to wrestle with life’s great moral questions while on his holiday, reportedly to be spent largely in Germany.
His latest woes were touched off two weeks ago when the ambitious head of his CDU parliamentary group, Jens Spahn, announced he and his husband had welcomed a baby born to a surrogate in the US.
The move smacked of hypocrisy given the CDU’s firm opposition to surrogacy, which is illegal in Germany, and Spahn resigned within days. His departure prompted Germany’s biggest cabinet reshuffle since the early 1960s.
The shake-up orchestrated by Merz was chaotic, with one designated minister pulling out at the last minute, leaving the sitting official he was to replace hung out to dry until he finally stepped down to preserve his own “dignity”.
The shambolic proceedings have led to intrigue worthy of a political thriller, with talk of a “palace revolt” against Merz and speculation over whether he would make it in office until Christmas. After his return to Berlin, Merz will face three state elections in September, in which the far-right AfD could see record results.
With the impression of disarray taking hold, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung could not resist noting that Merz’s other title for the book pile was a novel called Ship of Fools.