Pope Condemns Technologies Used to Change Gender

Pope Francis attends a meeting with members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, at the Vatican, Thursday, Oct. 5, 2017. (AP)

Pope Francis has denounced the use of new technologies to change gender, saying this "utopia of the neutral" risks the creation of new life.

Addressing Pontifical Academy for Life, the Vatican's bioethics advisory board, Francis on Oct. 4 criticized not only the technology but the entire idea behind it. He has denounced the so-called gender theory and the idea that people can choose their sex.

The academy represented the leading and hard-line voice of the Catholic Church on sexual morality, ethics and cultural concerns including abortion and euthanasia. The pontiff has restored it to widen its scope to better reflect his holistic view of human life in line with the purpose of creation.

However, in the recent meeting, he spoke against the academy's gender theory, criticizing the use of technological advances to choose one's gender.

"Rather than contrast negative interpretations of sexual differences ... they want to cancel these differences out altogether, proposing techniques and practices that render them irrelevant for human development and relations," he said, according to ABC News.

"[Such practices] risk dismantling the source of energy that fuels the alliance between men and women and renders them fertile," he added.