Because it “commercialises” pregnancy, Pope Francis has called surrogate motherhood a “despicable” practice that ought to be outlawed globally.

Traditionally, the appeal to action is a lament for all the world’s conflicts and injustices, and the Catholic leader issued it during his foreign policy address to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.

Francis continued, saying that an unborn child must not be “turned into an object of trafficking.” “The practice of “surrogate motherhood,” which is based on taking advantage of a mother’s material needs, is something I find abhorrent because it seriously violates the dignity of both the mother and the child.”

A child, he said, should never be “the basis of a commercial contract,” and called for a global ban on surrogacy “to prohibit this practice universally.”

Francis has in the past called surrogacy “uterus for rent,” and some European countries prohibit it, including Spain and Italy.

While the catholic church opposes the practice, the Vatican’s doctrine office on church teaching has made clear that homosexual parents who resort to surrogacy can have their children baptized.

This comes weeks after the same office, with Francis’ explicit approval, allowed the blessing of same-sex couples.

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