Pope Leo XIV denounced abortion and surrogacy while defending the family in a Friday address to the diplomatic corps.
He first highlighted what he considers to be two key challenges to the family today, namely, “a worrying tendency in the international system to neglect and underestimate its fundamental social role, leading to its progressive institutional marginalisation,” and “the growing and painful reality of fragile, broken and suffering families,” afflicted by internal problems such as domestic violence.
The vocation “to love and to life manifests itself in an important way in the exclusive and indissoluble union between a woman and a man,” Pope Leo said of marriage, and “implies a fundamental ethical imperative for enabling families to welcome and fully care for unborn life.” He did not specify what he meant by “enabling” families to welcome life. Nevertheless, married couples have a moral obligation to always remain open to life by refraining from contraception.
Such life is a “priceless gift” and is “increasingly a priority, especially in those countries that are experiencing a dramatic decline in birth rates,” he went on, without directly referencing contraception as a major contributing factor to declining birth rates.
He went on to condemn surrogacy and abortion, the latter of which he called a practice that “cuts short a growing life and refuses to welcome the gift of life.”
“In light of this profound vision of life as a gift to be cherished, and of the family as its responsible guardian, we categorically reject any practice that denies or exploits the origin of life and its development,” Leo said.