In 1999, six years before he was elected to the papacy, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger disclosed that he always carried an organ donor's card with him and encouraged the practice as "an act of love." Recently, a German doctor had been using that disclosure as a tool to advocate the practice. The Vatican asked him to stop, but he did not.
To settle the matter, the pope's secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, sent a letter to the doctor, which was picked up and reported by international press.
"It's true that the pope owns an organ donor card ... but contrary to public opinion, the card issued back in the 1970s became de facto invalid with Cardinal Ratzinger's election to the papacy," Vatican Radio quoted from the letter.
Vatican officials say that after a pope dies, his body belongs to the entire Church and must be buried intact. Furthermore, if papal organs were donated, they would become relics in other bodies if he were eventually made a saint.
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