The Pope can never be an organ donor for one very weird reason

Can the Pope be an organ donor? This might seem like a really strange question but it was one that took the media by storm in 2011 after news broke that Pope Benedict XVI had had an organ donor card for decades before becoming the Bishop of Rome. 

The Catholic Church actually does have a stance on organ donation, contrary to what some may believe. Roman Catholics see organ donation as “organ and tissue donation as an act of charity and love” according to the United Network for Sharing Organs. 

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Much of the Catholic Church’s views on organ donation were set out in Pope John Paul II’s 1995 ‘Evangelium Vitae’, an encyclopedia whose title translates to ‘The Gospel of Life.’ Pope John Paul II’s view of organ donation was one in line with the spirit of his religion.

John Paul II wrote in ‘Evangelium Vitae’ that “there is an everyday heroism, made up of gestures of sharing, big or small, which build up an authentic culture of life” according to the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. One of those acts of heroism was organ donation. 

“A particularly praiseworthy example of such gestures is the donation of organs,” John Paul II explained, “performed in an ethically acceptable manner, with a view to offering a chance of health and even of life itself to the sick who sometimes have no other hope.”

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia noted that the key phrase in John Paul II’s remarks was that any organ donation must be done in an ethical manner, which means it must be freely given as an act of love and not offered for sale to be morally justified. 

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Consent is also important in the act of organ donation. Next of kin must be notified if an organ donation is to take place, and the deceased’s body must have experienced brain death before the organs can be harvested from their body. 

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However, even if a Pope wants to donate their organs after their death, and they are willing to do so freely as an act of love with full consent, the Catholic Church forbids the harvesting of organs from a Pope upon their death. The issue has actually come up a lot. 

In 2011, Pope Benedict XVI made headlines around the world when it was reported that he had held an organ donor card for years, but upon his death, his organs would not be eligible to be donated thanks to a very interesting Vatican law. 

"It's true that the pope owns an organ donor card,” Pope Benedict XVI’s papal secretary Georg Gaenswein wrote in a 2011 letter that offered a rebuttal to a German doctor who had cited the Pope’s organ donor status during a campaign to recruit organ donors. 

“But contrary to public opinion, the card issued back in the 1970s became de facto invalid with Cardinal Ratzinger's election to the papacy," Gaenswein added according to a quote from his letter published by The Guardian at the time. 

According to several news outlets, a Pope’s body belongs to the Church upon a Pope’s death. The Catholic website uCathloic explained in a 2019 article that stated a Vatican law requires that the body of the deceased Pope be buried intact. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5

The reason why Popes can't donate an organ while living or dead was Polish Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers back when uCathloic published its article on papal organ donation. 

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons By Serge Serebro, Vitebsk Popular News, Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

The big problem posed by a hypothetical organ donation by a Pope is one of sainthood. If a Pope were to donate an organ to another individual, if upon their death that Pope is made a saint, it would mean a living person would have a holy relic inside of them. 

“Both the body and soul of the Pope belong to the Church. It is also understandable in view of possible future veneration. This doesn’t take anything away from the validity and the beauty of the gift of organ donation.” Archbishop Zimowski explained. 

It was this interesting explanation of why Pope’s can’t be organ donors that led British news outlet The Independent to run a headline that read: "Pope's organs are too holy to donate to mortals, says Church," a statement which does seem to be correct. 

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