Field Notes by Irena One founder's notes on beauty, humanity and the world.
Edition No. 1 — May 2026
What the Pope Reminded Me About Technology, Humanity and Why I Started Rena Roots
A few days ago, Pope Leo XIV issued Magnifica Humanitas, his first major theological letter, a stark warning about the growing power of artificial intelligence and a call for stronger regulation of the technology. You can read the full encyclical here.
In it, he warns that humanity faces a pivotal choice. One passage stopped me completely:
"...I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good, so that humanity will never lose its beauty..."
I put my phone down. As a former UN humanitarian worker, a founder, and someone who has spent the last few years building a business that sits at the intersection of science, beauty and human impact, that statement felt personal.
I use AI every day now.
I use it to brainstorm and to solve problems I cannot figure out alone. I use it for things that a year ago I would have needed to hire an entire team or agency to complete. As a bootstrapped founder wearing many hats, AI has been a lifeline. It helps me move faster and compete in a world designed for companies with teams I don't yet have. Some days it feels like I just launched a brand new company.
And I'll be honest, it excites me. The possibility of it. The way it levels the playing field for founders like me.
But the Pope's encyclical reaffirmed something I have been quietly afraid for some time: "Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice." AI is moving fast. Faster than most of us are willing to admit. And while the world debates its productivity gains and creative potential, very few people are having the harder conversation, the existential one. What kind of world are we building? Who will it belong to? Because history has shown us, repeatedly, what happens when power concentrates without accountability.
Why are world leaders not urgently convening on this and coming up with steps on regulation, and not just centered around the AI race and billions in funding? This, while wars rage and humanitarian crises deepen every single day. I think about my children. The world they will inherit. Whether the promise of AI will reach them equally or whether it will become yet another wall between the privileged and everyone else. I have spent my career in places where those walls already exist. I know what they cost.
The Pope didn't tell me anything I didn't already feel. He just reaffirmed it - the question that we must all ask and demand our leaders to act on.
Here is what I know from the field.
I have seen technology save lives. Early warning systems. Supply chains. Communication networks in the middle of nowhere. In the world's most broken places, technology has often been the difference between reaching someone in time and not.
But what I never saw technology replace was the human being who showed up. The aid worker who sat with a grieving mother, and broke bread with the community who lost everything. The farmer who knew to plant again against all odds. The community leader who understood what statistics never could — the human.
Technology gives us tools. Humanity gives us judgment, resilience and the ability to see what data misses. That is the lens we should never outsource.
Which is exactly why I started Rena Roots.
Not to sell serums but to prove that a supply chain could be an act of humanity. That the woman applying our Afghan Rose serum in New York could be connected to the farmer in Afghanistan who harvested that rose. That beauty could be a bridge, connecting two humans, two worlds.
We use science. We use biochemistry. We now use AI. But the Afghan Rose Oil in our serum was hand-harvested by a farmer whose family has grown roses for generations. No algorithm did that. No prompt engineered that relationship.
So what do I think about Magnifica Humanitas?
I think the Pope is right to raise the alarm. Not because AI is evil, it isn't. But because humans are very good at building powerful things and forgetting to ask who they are building them for and whether it is for the common good.
At Rena Roots, that question is built into everything we do. Every product we create, we ask: who does this serve? The customer, yes. But also the farmer. The community. The ecosystem for a more just world. Supporting jobs where they're needed most. If AI helps me make the world a better place for the common good, great. I will use it with gratitude. If it ever starts answering questions for me, without humanity at the center — that is when I put it down.
I have been a writer for as long as I can remember. I still have the poems I wrote in elementary school. I initially wrote this piece with a little help from AI. Then, frantically, had to rewrite it, shape it and make it mine. It is that part of me - the ego of a writer - that is not ready to let go. At least not yet.
Until when can I hold on? Until when can we, as a collective, hold on to the things that make us human, without losing them quietly, one prompt at a time?
Irena Loloci, Founder
Rena Roots - Beauty on Mission