The Vatican has issued a declaration listing “gender theory,” gender-affirming care, and even surrogacy as “violations of human dignity” alongside war, poverty, human trafficking, and other actual atrocities.

On Monday, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department in charge of religious discipline for the Catholic Church, released its “Dignitas Infinita.” The 20-page document has been in the works for the past five years and was approved by Pope Francis in March, according to the Associated Press. It calls for unconditional respect for human dignity regardless of “the person’s ability to understand and act freely,” reiterating Catholic teachings opposing abortion and euthanasia.

Notably, it 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.” It quotes Pope Francis’s 2016 “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), in which he stated that “every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence.”

At the same time, it quotes a January 2024 address in which Francis described “gender theory” as “extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”

“Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes,” the document asserts, “amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.” It also claims that “gender theory” denies “the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”

It quotes Francis’s “Amoris Laetitia,”, stating, “It needs to be emphasized that ‘biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated,’” 

In a section on “Sex Change,” Monday’s declaration asserts that gender-affirming care “risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” However, it endorses surgical intervention for intersex people, which it describes as people “with genital abnormalities.”

As for surrogacy, it claims the practice violates a child’s “right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin,” and “also violates the dignity of the woman, whether she is coerced into it or chooses to subject herself to it freely,” because she “is detached from the child growing in her and becomes a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.”

LGBTQ+ Catholic groups have already slammed the declaration.

Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry told the Associated Press, “While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored, and loved,” the document “does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people.”

“The suggestion that gender-affirming health care — which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and enabled them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities and [God] — might risk or diminish trans people’s dignity is not only hurtful but dangerously ignorant,” said Berlin-based activist Mara Klein. “Seeing that, in contrast, surgical interventions on intersex people — which if performed without consent especially on minors often cause immense physical and psychological harm for many intersex people to date — are assessed positively just seems to expose the underlying hypocrisy further.”

With Republican lawmakers across the U.S. continuing to push restrictions on access to gender-affirming care, Klein slammed the Vatican’s declaration at a time of “rising hostility towards our communities.”