Pope Benedict is a card carrying organ donor, the Italian Association of Organ Donors says. The disclosure that the pontiff is prepared to donate organs for transplants after his death follows a front page article in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, calling into question the concept of brain death as the end of life, The Times Online reports.
The article, by Lucetta Scaraffia, Professor of Modern History at Rome University, set off a heated debate in Italy and she admitted that she had "a certain resistance to organ transplants, I cannot accept them."
In response the Italian Association of Organ Donors confirmed the Pope had signed up as a donor when he was a cardinal.
In 1999, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he observed that organ donation was "an act of love", and said that he carried his membership card "with my personal details on it" at all times.
However, it is highly unlikely that any organs would be transplanted from Pope Benedict after his death, since the bodies of pontiffs are interred intact and revered, The Times Online says. Until the death of John Paul II in 2005 popes were embalmed.
Professor Scaraffia had noted that the Vatican had adopted brain death as the criterion for declaring a person dead after the publication of a landmark report by Harvard Medical School 40 years ago. However, members of the Catholic Church had voiced "many reservations", and in Vatican City itself "the certification of brain death is not used."
"The scientific justification of brain death rests on a peculiar definition of the nervous system that is now being questioned by new research, which casts doubt on the fact that brain death leads to the disintegration of the body," Professor Scaraffia said.
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said that Professor Scaraffia's article was "interesting and authoritative", but did not reflect the position of the Holy See or signal any change in the Magisterium, the official teaching of the Church.
Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan of Mexico, the Vatican "health minister" as head of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers, said that Pope John Paul II had also accepted the concept of brain death, and had fully backed organ transplants. "Organ donation is a very good thing and the Church has always supported it," Cardinal Barragan said.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
(Source: CathNews)