Vatican City, Feb 5, 2011 / 13:32 pm
Though he promotes organ donation, the Pope's own organs were officially rendered unavailable for further use when he was elected to the papacy, according to his secretary.
Msgr. Georg Gaenswein, Pope Benedict XVI's personal secretary, silenced debate in Germany over whether the Pope was still a card-holding organ donor.
Gloria TV produced a copy of a letter from the secretary to a German doctor clarifying the Pope's donating status. Dr. Gero Winkelmann had reportedly attempted to lend credibility to the idea of organ donation in lectures and articles by saying that the Pope himself had a donor card.
Before his election as the successor to John Paul II, the Pope had been a potential donor since the 1970s, explained Msgr. Gaenswein in the Feb. 5 message. But, he wrote, the donation card was rendered "obsolete" when Benedict XVI was elected Pope.