Monday, January 8, 2024

Pope delivers humanity list of ills

ROME - In a foreign policy address, Pope Francis called the dawn of 2024 a time in which peace is “increasingly threatened, weakened and in some part lost.” 

Citing Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, and the issues of migration, climate crises and the “immoral” production of nuclear and conventional weapons, the Pope delivered a list of ills afflicting humanity and the increasing violation of international humanitarian law that allows them. 

Among smaller-scale issues, he called for a universal ban on what he called the “despicable” practice of surrogate motherhood that included the “commercialization” of pregnancy that are threats to global peace and human dignity. 

The Pope said that the life of an unborn child must be protected and not “suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking.” 

Vatican teaching opposes in vitro fertilization. Francis has previously voiced the Catholic Church’s opposition to surrogacy, or what he has called “uterus for rent.” 

At the same time, however, the Vatican’s doctrine office has made clear that same-sex parents who resort to surrogacy can have their children baptized. (The AP 01/08/24)

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