pc28����

With my computer on my lap, my 4-month-old son at my feet in his bouncy chair and my 3-year-old bopping up and down to the Wiggles, several months prior when speaking with members of the Association of Italian Catholic Medical Doctors about Assisted Reproductive Technologies. 

When the pope delivered his talk, I was 39 and about to give birth to my second child. My husband and I had conceived this precious baby, along with his older brother, with the help of in-vitro fertilization (IVF). It took 10 years of pokes, pricks and procedures, as well as countless tears and unimaginable emotional stress to finally become our little family of four.

And when I came across the pope’s words, we had just baptized our second child into the Catholic faith, a faith that had nourished my husband and I, our Italian immigrant parents and generations of family. 

His words crushed me.

I hadn’t been aware of the Catholic Church’s stance on assisted reproduction put forth by Pope John Paull II in “Donum Vitae” or “Respect for Human Life” in 1987. But even after reading the document, I wondered how Pope Francis could use such harsh and, in my opinion, inaccurate words about the way my two children came into the world.

For a pope whose ministry was based on mercy to all rather than punishing sin, why couldn’t he extend his compassion to the infertile? Why couldn’t this pontiff offer mercy to those who wanted to experience pregnancy, childbirth and genetic parenthood?

After Francis’s passing, my husband and I watched the morning news with our sons, now 10 and 12. I couldn’t help but notice all the older men standing before his coffin in their beautiful robes. There it was in red and white — no woman would have a say in the selection of the next pope.

I applauded Pope Francis’s efforts to treat LGBTQ+ and divorced Catholics with dignity and compassion. Still, with 1-in-6 people experiencing infertility worldwide, many of us are looking to the next pontiff to build on Francis’s work on mercy by recognizing our differences and supporting our challenges. 

I understand these are far from simplistic issues. According to Pope John Paul II in “Donum Vitae,” IVF fails to respect the connection between procreation and the conjugal act of a married couple. What’s not complicated is the pain and suffering those of us, straight, gay, or single, experience when conceiving through sexual intercourse is not an option.

Daily, painful hormone injections, regular ultrasound appointments, invasive tests and procedures, missed work, financial stress, insensitive comments and a world that exalts motherhood but seems at best disinterested in our intimate struggles — all of these consumed the daily lives of millions of Catholic women.

Anyone who followed Francis’ papacy closely knows that change within the Catholic Church is painfully slow, if it occurs at all. But unlike his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Francis did wonders in opening up conversations on issues such as LGBTQ+ and divorced Catholics and the ordination of women. The dialogue he fostered around assisted reproduction, such as using words like “sin” and calling it a “bad experiment,” only served to stigmatize those of us already suffering. 

My hope is that the next pope is compassionate to all those on the margins, even those of us who have seem to have everything except the thing we want most. Genuine compassion is the ability to act on mitigating the suffering of others.

As a child growing up in a Catholic home and in Ontario’s Catholic schools, the message was always the same: Jesus was consistently compassionate to those who sought healing. Could the next pope not extend this very compassion to those with infertility?