And now for something innovative — a Catholic hospital involved in stem-cell research, but not in a way you might think :

Women giving birth by cesarean section at a Catholic hospital in Florida can contribute to cutting-edge research that could benefit burn victims, diabetics and wounded soldiers.

With the permission of the new mothers, St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital in Tampa has been collecting placentas for use in stem-cell research by the regenerative medicine company Stemnion.

The Pittsburgh-based Stemnion recently opened a research facility in Clearwater, so that cells can be extracted from the afterbirth tissue within a few hours of delivery. Since January, 77 women with prescheduled cesarean deliveries at St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital have consented to the placental donations, and 63 placentas have been successfully donated.

Stemnion officials gathered Sept. 23 at the Clearwater facility with church leaders, including Bishop Robert N. Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., and Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, to celebrate the collaboration, which started when Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, then bishop of Pittsburgh, first heard about the fledgling company six years ago.

Sister Carol, a Daughter of Charity, said she and the bishops “wanted to see morally upright, good stem-cell research being done in our many Catholic hospitals.”

St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital was a good candidate for the program because about 7,000 babies are born there each year, nearly 3,000 of them by C-section, although many of those are not preplanned.

The research — morally acceptable under Catholic teaching since it does not involve the destruction of human embryos — is aimed at developing healing therapies including a skin replacement barrier that could reduce disfigurement and contraction in severely burned patients.

“It’s a great opportunity to be on the cutting edge and advance the care of severely injured people, both military and diabetics and people who are terribly burned,” Sister Carol said.

Read the rest here.