Pope Leo XIV condemns abortion, surrogacy in speech to Vatican diplomats

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — 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 marginalization,” 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. 

Pope Leo XIV denounces abortion, calls financing of cross-border mobility for abortions and the public funding of abortion as “deplorable”:

“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… pic.twitter.com/5YgGYPBCVs

— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) January 9, 2026

He criticized the taxpayer funding of abortion, telling the diplomats that the Holy See “considers it deplorable that public resources are allocated to suppress life, rather than being invested to support mothers and families.”

“The primary objective must remain the protection of every unborn child and the effective and concrete support of every woman so that she is able to welcome life,” said Leo, suggesting that a woman needs “concrete support” in order to be able to welcome life.

He also voiced “deep concern” about the financing of cross-border travel for the purposes of obtaining abortions.

The pope then condemned the practice of surrogacy, declaring that it 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 that it thereby “distort[s] the original relational calling of the family.”

Pope Leo XIV denounces surrogacy:

“Likewise, there is the practice of surrogacy. By transforming 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,… pic.twitter.com/a9F0mkC55D

— Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) January 9, 2026

“In light of these challenges, we firmly reiterate that the protection of the right to life constitutes the indispensable foundation of every other human right. A society is healthy and truly progresses only when it safeguards the sanctity of human life and works actively to promote it,” Leo continued.

The pope stressed that honoring the right to life also means euthanasia must be rejected, and he called assisted suicide practices “deceptive forms of compassion.”

While Leo has clearly and repeatedly condemned abortion, he has also repeatedly claimed that support of the death penalty – which was affirmed by the Catholic Church to be permissible up until the pontificate of Francis – negates the pro-life stance of abortion opponents.

This contradicts longstanding Church teaching as expressed, for example, by St. Thomas Aquinas, who has affirmed that “if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good.” Pope Pius XII likewise defended in 1955 the authority of the state to use the death penalty because “the coercive power of legitimate human authority” is based on “the sources of revelation and traditional doctrine.”

In an address in 2023, then-Cardinal Robert Prevost stated:

A Catholic cannot declare himself “in favor of life” just because he has a position against abortion, and affirm at the same time that he is in favor of the death penalty. […] Those who defend the right to life of the most vulnerable must be equally visible in supporting the quality of life of the weakest among us: the elderly, children, the hungry, the homeless, and undocumented migrants.

Again in 2025, after declining to comment on the fact that Cardinal Blase Cupich had expressed his intention to give an award to pro-abortion Senator Dick Durbin, he claimed that he did not know many details of the case and added that one has to look “at the overall work that a senator has done during … 40 years of service in the United States Senate.”

The Roman pontiff then stated that “someone who says I’m against abortion but says I’m in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life,” additionally asserting that “someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”