(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Robert Barron took to social media to praise Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s announcement that HHS is working toward ending “sex-rejecting” medical and surgical procedures that mutilate the bodies of gender-confused children.
“So-called gender affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people. This is not medicine. It is malpractice,” said Kennedy during an HHS press conference. “We’re done with junk science driven by ideological pursuits, not the well-being of children.”
“I was so pleased to see Secretary Robert Kennedy’s announcement this morning that he is endeavoring to ban so-called gender re-assignment surgery and the use of puberty blockers that halt natural sexual development,” wrote Bishop Barron on X. “The Catholic Church agrees with Secretary Kennedy that these procedures result in irreparable physical harm and typically increase the psychological distress of those who undergo them.”
When I was still an auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles, I attended with my brother bishops from California an ad limina visit with Pope Francis. At the conclusion of the meeting, as we were rising to leave, the Pope stopped us and said, “I want you all to battle the gender ideology…
— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) December 18, 2025
Barron cited a private meeting with Pope Francis in which the Pontiff directed Barron and other bishops to “battle” gender ideology.
“When I was still an auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles, I attended with my brother bishops from California an ad limina visit with Pope Francis. At the conclusion of the meeting, as we were rising to leave, the Pope stopped us and said, ‘I want you all to battle the gender ideology that is sweeping your country. It is opposed to the Bible and to our Catholic anthropology,’” recounted Barron.
READ: Trump HHS moves to crack down on transgender mutilation of children
“In his later declaration ‘Dignitas infinita,’ Pope Francis strongly reiterated this position, arguing that gender ideology is deeply harmful to the dignity of young people,” added the bishop.
“Anyone with a pastor’s heart sympathizes with those who suffer from gender dysphoria and insists that all people must be treated with love, compassion, respect, and dignity,” said Barron.
“But interventions that result in the mutilation of our young people are neither compassionate nor respectful,” he continued. “I’m grateful to Secretary Kennedy and the Department of Health and Human Services for this action.”
Kennedy signed a declaration that “sex rejecting procedures are neither safe nor effective treatment for children with gender dysphoria,” based upon a peer-reviewed study of gender dysphoria. He called it a “clear directive to providers to follow the science and the overwhelming body of evidence that these procedures hurt, not help, children.”
“Doctors assume a solemn obligation to protect children. Yet doctors across the country provide needless and irreversible sex rejecting procedures that violate their sacred Hippocratic oath, violating the very lives they are sworn to safeguard,” he declared.
“Sex-rejecting procedures on children — which include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations — expose them to irreversible damage, including infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other irreversible physiological effects,” noted a separate statement simultaneously released by HHS.
“This is not medicine; it is malpractice,” said Kennedy.
