VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has long championed organ transplants, but don’t expect an organ donation from him. The Vatican says his body belongs to the whole church.
While the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has possessed an organ donor card since the 1970s when he lived in Germany, it was rendered void when he became pope in 2005, his secretary said.Monsignor Georg Gaenswein addressed the issue in a letter to a German doctor who has been using the fact that Benedict possessed a donor card to recruit other donors. Vatican Radio reported on the letter in a German language broadcast this week.
Gaenswein sought to put the matter to rest, saying any references to the now invalid document are mistaken. [Source]
It does bring up an interesting question. If you received an organ from a person later canonized in your own lifetime, you would have a first class relic with you at all times.
8 comments
Would that also make you a third class relic yourself?
A papal organ donation is nice, but I’d be content with just a piano. 🙂
I suspect any cause for the donor would be delayed at least until those donated to had passed away. Wouldn’t very well do to have people venerating someone as a living reliquary.
Panda LOL
I am not an organ donor because according to Fr Tad from the NCCB, brain death is very difficult to diagnose and doctors might be tempted to declare death if a particular organ was needed. Fr Tad did give a few years ago a proof as to how to determine whether indeed the brain is dead but in his recent programmes on Catholic Answers he hasn’t repeated this. I have what he said but it is in My Documents and my search engine no longer works. *sigh*
LOL!
And this doesn’t even begin to address what happens in the case of blood donation, either by the saint or by the saint’s organ recipients :-).
Peace,
–Peter
I thought it was interesting that in many cases saints’ bodies are incorruptable. So you could have a heart in one coffin, a kidney in another, a set of corneas in a third… 🙂
So would that make the child of St. Gianna Molla who was alive when her mother was canonized a relic?