Francis calls for a ban on surrogacy, calling it ‘despicable’

Pope Francis, in an annual address to ambassadors on Monday, called surrogacy a “despicable” practice that should be universally banned due to the “commercialization” of pregnancy, including the practice in wars, terrorism and other threats to peace and humanity.

An unborn child should not be “turned into an object of human trafficking,” Francis said. “I consider despicable the practice of so-called surrogacy, which represents a serious violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.” A child, he said, should “never be the basis of a commercial contract,” and called for a global ban on surrogacy “to universally ban this practice.”

Francis has in the past called surrogacy “womb for rent,” a term often used by Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who also opposes the practice and has also supported the criminalization of Italians traveling abroad dealing with surrogacy. Surrogacy is already illegal in Italy and several other European countries.

Although the Church opposes the practice, the Vatican Office of Church Doctrine has made it clear that children born through surrogacy can be baptized. That same office has in recent weeks, with Francis’ explicit approval, allowed the blessing of same-sex couples.

The pope’s comment came during an annual foreign policy address to diplomats accredited to the Holy See, which traditionally serves as a lament for all the world’s conflicts and injustices. This year there was a lot of material to work with, as he called the new year a time when peace was “increasingly threatened, weakened and to some extent lost.”

Although Francis was once reluctant to name Russia as an aggressor in the war with Ukraine, he specifically mentioned the “large-scale war waged by the Russian Federation against Ukraine,” one of his bluntest comments yet on the conflict.