At a UN event held on March 12, Archbishop Gabriele Caccia joined diplomats from Italy, Paraguay, and Turkey in highlighting the exploitative nature of surrogacy.
Archbishop Caccia, until recently Permanent Observer of the Holy See at the United Nations and now the apostolic nuncio to the United States, said that “stories of the rich and famous commissioning surrogates are common, whereas stories of wealthy women serving as surrogates are rare.”
Quoting Pope Leo, he added, “By transforming gestation into a negotiable service, [surrogacy] 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.”