Q: Can you tell me what the Church’s teaching on organ donation is? My license is due for renewal and I am trying to make an informed decision about what to nominate.

A: In recent times there has been some active promotion of the value of organ donation. This is worthwhile, subject always to ensuring that people are left completely free in what is a very personal and sensitive matter.

Pope John Paul II, in his address to the First International Congress of the Society for Organ Sharing in 1991, described organ donation as “a concrete gesture of human solidarity and a projection beyond death of the sort of self-giving love that society needs.

“Since transplantation is essentially a human act of donation, it presupposes a prior, explicit, free and conscious decision on the part of the donor or of someone who legitimately represents the donor, usually the closest relatives.”

In 1999 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, disclosed that he was a registered organ donor, saying “to donate one’s organs is an act of love that is morally licit, as long as it is free and spontaneous.”

The Church is profoundly aware that vital organs may be donated for transplant only after the donor's death. Families need an assurance that death has already occurred and if they are in any doubt about this, as can happen when life support systems are still in place, the hospital authorities should make sure that the medical facts are clearly explained.

Donor families must also be supported at the time of the death of their loved one. They are grieving and have to deal with what is usually an unexpected and traumatic death, while coming to terms with consenting to an organ donation.