VATICAN CITY - The Vatican issued a broad condemnation Tuesday of fertility treatments such as in-vitro fertilization, calling the destruction of embryos in the process a "massacre of the innocents."

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano published the final communique from the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life following a conference it hosted last month on "The dignity of human procreation and reproductive technologies: anthropological and ethical aspects."

In the communique, the academy restated the Vatican position that any treatment that substitutes for sexual intercourse between a husband and wife - such as the creation of an embryo in a laboratory that is later implanted - is considered illicit because the embryo isn't the fruit of the "conjugal union."

It condemned the use of embryos for research.

The Vatican holds that embryos are human and thus deserve all the rights and dignity granted to humans.