By Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David
Pax Silica. The name itself invites reflection. Pax is the Latin word for peace. History has known several “Pax” eras, or eras of world peace. So Pax Silica is proclaiming an era of world peace through silicon?
The Pax Romana promised stability through the power of the Roman Empire. The Pax Britannica was sustained by Britain’s naval supremacy and commercial dominance during the 19th century. The Pax Americana emerged after the Second World War under the military, economic and institutional leadership of the United States.
Each claimed to offer peace. Yet each also rested, to varying degrees, on the predominance of a great power. The peace they secured was never free from conflict, nor from the temptation to equate peace with superiority.
Today, we hear of Pax Silica — a name that seems to herald a new world order shaped not by empires or fleets, but by silicon, semiconductors, artificial intelligence and digital technologies.
But can silicon bring peace?
Artificial intelligence is among humanity’s greatest achievements. It holds immense promise for medicine, education, scientific research, environmental protection and economic development. Yet the same technologies can also be harnessed for disinformation, cyberattacks, autonomous weapons, mass surveillance, political manipulation and ever more sophisticated forms of warfare.
Technology itself is morally neutral. It amplifies the intentions of those who wield it.
This is why Pope Leo XIV, in Magnifica Humanitas, shifts our attention away from the machine and back to the human person. The decisive question is not, “What can artificial intelligence do?” but “What kind of human beings are we becoming?” The deepest crisis of our age is not technological but anthropological. Unless technological progress is guided by a moral vision rooted in the dignity of the human person and the common good, the digital revolution risks becoming yet another arena where power prevails over justice.
Pope Francis made the same appeal in Fratelli Tutti. A world governed solely by competing national interests and the logic that might makes right can never achieve lasting peace. It can only produce new rivalries, new arms races and eventually new wars.
The Catholic Church, as a communion of local Churches that transcends national borders and geopolitical rivalries, has the responsibility to bring a moral voice into political and economic discourse. She does not oppose science or technological innovation. Rather, she insists that they remain at the service of the human person, the common good, care for our common home and the fraternity of the entire human family.
The aspiration for a genuine Pax Silica will not be fulfilled by silicon alone. It will be fulfilled only if the digital revolution is guided by truth rather than propaganda, dialogue rather than polarization, cooperation rather than domination, justice rather than exploitation and peace rather than war.
Only then can technological progress become part of what Pope Leo calls a civilization of love, rather than merely another chapter in humanity’s long history of cultures of power.
