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Surrogacy “translates into the sale of a child” and undermines the dignity of both women and children, said Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, the Holy See’s secretary for relations with states, in forceful remarks delivered January 13 at a Vatican-hosted diplomatic gathering.
As explained by OSV News reporter Junno Arocho Esteves, Archbishop Gallagher addressed the issue during an event organized by the Italian Embassy to the Holy See titled “A United Front for Human Dignity: Preventing the Commodification of Women and Children in Surrogacy.”
The aim, embassy officials said, was to spark international dialogue on the ethical, legal, and social implications of the practice.
“One cannot evade reality in its essential core: this practice translates into the sale of a child,” the archbishop said, arguing that surrogacy rests on the “commodification of the person,” a direct violation of human dignity.
Such concerns, he added, explain why the Catholic Church gives sustained attention to the issue.
Archbishop Gallagher’s remarks echoed the position of Pope Leo XIV, who denounced surrogacy along with abortion and euthanasia in a January 9 address to diplomats accredited to the Holy See.
The Pope warned that turning pregnancy into a negotiable service reduces a child to a “product” while exploiting a woman’s body and distorting the family’s relational meaning.
Pope Leo: Surrogacy is a violation of dignity
As such, "we categorically reject any practice that denies or exploits the origin of life and its development," he said. He also spoke about surrogacy, which he said serves to make "gestation into a negotiable service."
"This violates the dignity both of the child, who is reduced to a 'product,' and of the mother, exploiting her body and the generative process, and distorting the original relational calling of the family," he said.
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The Vatican foreign minister also recalled how Pope Francis had condemned surrogacy in 2024 and called for a universal ban, even amid public criticism. Those words, Archbishop Gallagher said, were fully consistent with longstanding Church teaching on the sacredness of life and the inalienable value of every human person.
Drawing on international law, he cited Article 2 of the U.N. Optional Protocol on the sale of children, which defines the practice as any transaction transferring a child for remuneration or other consideration. By that standard, he argued, surrogacy fits the definition precisely. Contracts, he noted, often specify desired traits of the unborn child and outline outcomes if expectations are not met — language more suited to merchandise than to human life.
The practice, he continued, also fractures a woman’s identity by separating her bodily, biological, and relational bond with the child she carries. Pregnancy, Archbishop Gallagher emphasized, is not a mechanical process that can be substituted or outsourced without moral consequence. Feminist critics, he added, have likewise warned that surrogacy risks reducing women to reproductive instruments.
Opposition to surrogacy must move beyond shared convictions, the archbishop concluded, toward broad civic and political cooperation. Only a coalition of states, civil society groups, and non-governmental organizations, he said, can generate the momentum needed for an international ban that upholds human dignity in law and practice.
