(ZENIT News / Rome, 01.14.2024).- The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced in an interview with the Spanish news agency EFE a new document on human dignity that will address social issues but will also be a critique of moral issues “such as gender change, surrogacy, gender ideologies, etc.” (sic).
Cardinal Fernández makes this statement after being asked if he wishes to clarify any issues that may cause confusion, following the Fiducia Supplicans declaration and the erotic book of which he is the author: “I must say that I don’t think I will be in the news in the future because we do not have any controversial topics planned in the dicastery, as in the recent ones,” he responds.
Regarding the upcoming document, the Pope already denounced surrogacy in his address to the Diplomatic Corps on January 8:
The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking. In this regard, I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs. A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract. Consequently, I express my hope for an effort by the international community to prohibit this practice universally. At every moment of its existence, human life must be preserved and defended; yet I note with regret, especially in the West, the continued spread of a culture of death, which in the name of a false compassion discards children, the elderly and the sick.
On the other hand, this new document seems to respond to the request made by bishops such as Cardinal Eijk of Utrecht, who asked the Pope for an encyclical on gender ideology.
