Pope's Body Too Holy For Organ Donations

Mgr Gaenswein did not specify why the Pope is not able to donate his organs. But Archbishop Zymunt Zimowski, a member of the Vatican health council, said it was because the body of the Pope effectively belonged to the entire Catholic Church. "It's understandable that the body of the Pontiff should rest intact because, in his role as successor to Saint Paul and universal pastor of the Catholic Church, he belongs entirely to the Church in spirit and body," he told La Repubblica.

But pontiffs' bodies have not always been kept intact. Until the end of the 19th century, it was traditional for a pontiff's organs to be preserved after his death and kept in an urn in the Church of Saints Vincenzo and Anastasio near Rome's Trevi Fountain. In 1958, after the death of Pope Pius XII, an Italian doctor devised a new method for conserving the body without extracting the organs. Unfortunately it was not a success; the body turned green and began to putrefy.-Pope's organs are too holy to donate to mortals, says Church