Joseph Alois Ratzinger, who popularly known as Pope Benedict XVI, the 265th and the current pope of the Roman Catholic Church was announced by the Vatican to be no longer an organ donor, even though he has championed different organ transplants right before he became a pope.
When he was in Germany before, Pope Benedict XVI possessed an organ donor card since 1970’s, but when he was elected as the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church last year 2005 at the age of 78, his organ donor card was rendered.
According to the Pope’s secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, there is a German doctor who has been using the fact that the Pope possessed a donor card just to recruit other donors. “Any references to the now invalid document are mistaken,” Gaenswein said, seeking for the issue to rest.
In the La Repubblica, the second largest circulation Italian daily general-interest newspaper, it was declared by Polish Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, head of the Vatican’s health office, that a pope’s body remains intact because it belongs to the entire church.
“It is also understandable in view of possible future veneration,” he said, referring to future sainthood.
“This doesn’t take anything away from the validity and the beauty of the gift of organ donation,” Zimowski also noted.