![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Pope-Leo-XIV-CNN.jpeg?ssl=1\")
<\/a>The American Pope Leo XIV has quoted the British author J.R.R. Tolkien in his latest papal encyclical, published May 15, 2026: \u201cOn Safeguarding The Human Person In The Time Of Artificial Intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pope quotes Gandalf from The Return of the King, <\/i>the third volume of The Lord of the Rings<\/i><\/a>. Libertarian Futurist Society members inducted the trilogy in 2009 into our Prometheus Hall of Fame for Best Classic Fiction.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As reported in File 770,<\/a> the Pope\u2019s encyclical includes this passage:<\/p>\n \u201cThe twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: \u2018It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.\u2019 The civilization of love 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 dehumanization.<\/p>\n This is also the first time that the Prometheus Blog has posted a link to the Vatican\u2019s website. Read the full encyclical here<\/a>.<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t on my bingo card!<\/p>\n But I\u2019m glad to see the wisdom of Tolkien acknowledged.<\/p>\n Even better would have been if the Pope had highlighted the central libertarian theme of The Lord of the Rings<\/em> – explored in the Prometheus Blog Appreciation<\/a> of this well-deserved award winner – highlighting the perennial threat of being corrupted by the lure of absolute power.<\/p>\n Although I am not a Catholic, it\u2019s hard for me to imagine how any \u201ccivilization of love\u201d can develop and prosper without limiting power – especially the institutionalized and organized political power of coercive government and its inherent tendencies toward corruption, war, tyranny and slavery.<\/p>\n Only by cultivating and enforcing a ban against aggression – a moral and legal sanction against the initiation of force or fraud, in Ayn Rand\u2019s<\/a> terminology, while preserving the necessary right of self-defense against aggression – can any civilization worthy of the name achieve both peace and freedom.<\/p>\n ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS<\/b><\/p>\n *\u00a0Join us!<\/b> To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, \u00a0join<\/a> the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other\u2019s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.<\/p>\n * Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/b>For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced \u00a0Prometheus Awards page<\/a>\u00a0on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of the 106 works that have won a Prometheus since 1979 fits the awards\u2019 distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.<\/p>\n *\u00a0Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog\u2019s\u00a0Video page.<\/a><\/p>\n * Read \u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/a> an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/i>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n * Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Michael Grossberg A Pope has quoted a Prometheus-winning classic in an encyclical letter. So far as I can tell, that seems to be a first. The American Pope Leo XIV has quoted the British author J.R.R. Tolkien in his latest papal encyclical, published May 15, 2026: \u201cOn Safeguarding The Human Person In The Time … Continue reading A historic first: The Pope quotes a Prometheus-winning classic (and it makes sense that it\u2019s Tolkien)\u2028<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,1854,1585,1863,10],"tags":[2863,2864,979,825,2862],"class_list":["post-10883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-updates","category-ayn-rand","category-fiction-in-the-news","category-j-r-r-tolkien","category-news","tag-catholicism","tag-gandalf","tag-j-r-r-tolkien","tag-the-lord-of-the-rings","tag-the-pope"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-2Px","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10883"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10885,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10883\/revisions\/10885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a>“For this reason, it is worthwhile pausing to reflect on some aspects of how we, each in our own way, can cooperate in building the civilization of love. Without presuming to exhaust this theme, I would like to propose five paths toward daily and public responsibility: the need to disarm words, building peace through justice, adopting the perspective of victims, cultivating a healthy realism and reviving dialogue and multilateralism.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n