Francis has previously voiced the Catholic Church’s opposition to what he has called “uterus for rent.”’
By Claudia Ogbonna
Decode – Pope Francis on Monday called for a universal ban on what he described as the “despicable” practice of surrogate motherhood, saying a child is a gift and “never the basis of a commercial contract.”
In his foreign policy address to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, the Pope included surrogacy as one of the threats to global peace and human dignity.
According to him, the life of the unborn child must be protected and not “suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking.”
“I consider despicable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs,” he said.
Francis has previously voiced the Catholic Church’s opposition to what he has called “uterus for rent,” and some European countries prohibit it, including Spain and Italy. At the same time, however, the Vatican’s doctrine office has made clear that homosexual parents who resort to surrogacy can have their children baptized.
