Christianity Pope Can No Longer Donate Organs: Vatican

Pope can no longer donate organs: Vatican
Reuters - February 4, 2011

Pope Benedict XVI waves as he leaves the Eucharistic celebration after giving to the 24 newly appointed cardinals their ring on November 21, 2010 at St Peter's basilica at The Vatican.
Photograph by: AFP, Getty

Pope Benedict has a soft spot in his heart for organ donations but his body parts can't be donated to save lives after he dies, the Vatican says.

A doctor in Germany had been using the fact that the pope possessed an organ donors' card from a medical association 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 and the missive was reported in the German program of Vatican Radio.

"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.

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."

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.

© Copyright (c) Reuters

Source: http://www.theprovince.com/life/story.html?id=4224720

WOW. wow wow..last sentence has me ???dumbfounded...even more than the entire article...dead bodies - saints - their donated organs - relics inisde a living person - and when that person dies ?/ what happens to the "saintly" organs in a ordinary body ?/ so complicated...in other words..a dead "saint" has to have his full body with him..?? wow.

Gyani ji - The reason is not to keep the full body of the saint intact. The reason is to make sure that body parts are not distributed for "profane" or non-sacred uses. The possession of relics is very important in the Catholic church.

http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/things/relics.htm


Therefore, body parts of important religious figures have to be closely monitored.

Relics of saints are believed to have the miraculous powers of healing people with terminal illness, and similar grave or catastrophic conditions. The belief in the power of relics has continued for hundreds of years. There is a story that when the church philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas, a major figure in western philosophy, finally passed the monks of his order immediately set to boiling the corpse so that the bones could be easily taken apart and broken into relics for distribution and to establish shrines. This was a common practice. Over time, relics became objects of worship, and this led to problems of "authenticity," the sale of relics, and ultimately economic corruption.

To read more here is just one link http://books.google.com/books?id=GI...nepage&q=Thomas Aquinas corpse boiled&f=false

Murti Puja- Idol worshiping in the Catholic Church is akin to what it is in the Eastern Orthodox Church which is its cousin and ofcourse also to Hinduism.

The Catholic Church is afraid that if Pope's body parts are donated, then automatically the recipients become " semi holy", " mini me Sants" and eventually when the Pope becomes a Saint then there will be a lot of Catholic Derawalas cropping up because we all know that religion is a money making machine specially when one has the charisma to fool the ignorant.

Tejwant Singh

So...the Pope's body parts are too holy to save someone's life.

Am I the only one to notice that under the picture of the pope is another picture, an ad? Together they read:
Pope can no longer donate organs: Vatican...And I'm a Mormon.

Maybe my sense of humour is warped

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