July 19, 2026

To kick off the month, I had the blessing of being able to get away for awhile. I call it my annual West Coast Swing. For many years, I have used this time to visit two very important people in my life. One is a priest friend who now lives in Concord, California. Father Richard Mangini hosted me, as he had done for many seminarians, at his parish in San Leandro, California. I was doing a student chaplaincy program at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center. Father Mangini became a mentor to me in how to be a good person, a priest and pastor. He and I have maintained a friendship for over forty years. Time and distance have not strained our good relationship. He is now eighty-five and I enjoy spending time with him and reminding him what a vital role he plays in my life.

From there, I went to Portland, Oregon, as is my routine on my West Coast Swing. There I would visit an old friend, Virginia Haacke. I came to know her through her, son, Mark, who was a close friend of mine. Mark became very ill and died in 1988, but his family and I remained in contact. His father passed away about ten years ago. Unfortunately, Virginia died at age ninety-nine about ten days before I arrived. I still wanted to go to Portland because her other son, Randy and I have kept a good friendship, and we shared some time together.

As I reflect on this trip, it reminds me how important my family and friends are to me. I feel closer to some of my family than ever. I am grateful for the many friends I have made with priests, parishioners and those who God just drops in our lives to make us better people.  Sometimes I feel like I let down some friends because it is hard to keep up with everyone! But still, the effort is worthy, and for me, very important.

I’ve been able to take some quiet time to read Pope Leo’s encyclical letter “Magnifica Humanitas, On the Safeguarding of the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” It is quite a work that I am still wading through. It is dense, enlightening and very important. Pope Leo takes us through the history of the Church’s Social Doctrine which has its roots in the Gospel, but for our times, blossomed with Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum” which means, “New Things.” It is a deceivingly simple title for a profoundly important document.

The link between these two documents is the desire to lift up the cause of human dignity. While Leo XIII’s teaching came at a time of great industrial expansion, so now Leo XIV’s work is concerned with the AI revolution. A common problem faced in both is the danger of basing a person’s value in what they can produce. In other words, people can become mere commodities, like so many products. There is also the common concern of wealth (financial and intellectual) being concentrated in the hands of a few to the point that our minds and perspectives are formed by them, not by the individual. We see that in the algorithms that dictate the items that pop up on our computers, often putting us in an echo chamber of our own thoughts, right or wrong, being affirmed without any personal analysis or discernment. For a very simplified synopsis, go to pontificalmissions.org.