Vatican document angers LGBTQ+ Catholics
Gender theory and related surgery and surrogacy violate human dignity, the church says.
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Monday declared gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy to be grave violations of human dignity, putting them on par with abortion and euthanasia as practices that reject God’s plan for human life.
The Vatican’s doctrine office issued “Infinite Dignity,” a 20-page declaration that has been in the works for five years. After substantial revision in recent months, it was approved March 25 by Pope Francis, who ordered its publication.
In the document, the Vatican repeats its rejection of “gender theory,” the idea that one’s gender can be changed. It says God created man and woman as biologically different, separate beings, and people must not tinker with that plan or try to “make oneself God.”
“It follows that any sexchange intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,” the document says.
The Vatican distinguishes between gender-affirming surgeries, which it rejects, and “genital abnormalities” that are present at birth or develop later. Those abnormalities can be “resolved” by healthcare professionals, it says.
Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics immediately criticized the document as outdated, harmful and contrary to the stated goal of recognizing the “infinite dignity” of all of God’s children. They warned it could have realworld effects on trans people, fueling violence and discrimination against them.
“While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored and loved, it does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people,” said Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics.
The document’s existence, rumored since 2019, was confirmed in recent weeks by the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, a Francis confidant. He had cast it as a nod to conservatives after he authored a more explosive document approving blessings for same-sex couples that sparked criticism from bishops around the world, especially in Africa.
Yet the document takes pointed aim at countries — including many in Africa — that criminalize homosexuality. It echoes Francis’ assertion in a 2023 interview with the Associated Press that “being homosexual is not a crime,” making the assertion part of the Vatican’s doctrinal teaching.
The new document denounces “as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.”
The document is something of a repackaging of previously articulated Vatican positions. It restates well-known Catholic doctrine opposing abortion and euthanasia and adds to the list some of Francis’ main concerns as pope: the threats to human dignity posed by poverty, war, human trafficking and forced migration.
In a newly articulated position, it says surrogacy violates the dignity of both the surrogate mother and the child.
While much attention about surrogacy has focused on exploitation of poor women as surrogates, the Vatican document asserts that the child “has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver.”
“Considering this, the legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a ‘right to a child’ that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life,” it states.
The Vatican previously published its most articulated position on gender in 2019, when the Congregation for Catholic Education rejected the idea that people can choose or change their genders and insisted on the complementarity of biologically male and female sex organs to create life.
The new document from the more authoritative Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith quotes from that 2019 position but tempers the tone. Significantly, it doesn’t repeat the language of a 1986 doctrinal document that said homosexual people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, but homosexual actions are “intrinsically disordered.”
In a news conference to introduce the document, Fernandez acknowledged that the “intrinsically disordered” language was strong and that there might be a better way, “with other words,” to express the church’s vision of sex as a perfect union between husband and wife to create life.
“It’s true, the expression could find other words to express this mystery,” he said.
The Rev. James Martin, who has called for the church to extend outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics, said the gender terminology is similar to that in past declarations. But he welcomed the condemnation of legislation and violence against LGBTQ+ people.
“That cannot be repeated too often as an offense against human dignity. The LGBTQ person, like everyone else, has infinite dignity,” he said in an email.
Francis has made reaching out to LGBTQ+ people a hallmark of his papacy, ministering to trans Catholics and insisting that the church welcome all children of God.
But he has denounced “gender theory” as the “worst danger” facing humanity today, an “ugly ideology” that threatens to cancel out God-given differences between man and woman. He has blasted in particular what he calls the “ideological colonization” of the West in the developing world, where development aid is sometimes conditioned on adopting Western ideas about gender and reproductive health.
Transgender activists immediately called the document “hurtful” and devoid of the voices and experiences of real people, especially in its distinction between transgender people and intersex people.