However, in December 2018, in a responsum (a reply by a Curial department that is intended to settle a question or dispute, but that is not a papal document), the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), under its Prefect, Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., stated that if the uterus can be found, with moral certainty, to not be able to ever carry a fertilized ovum to the point of viability, that a hysterectomy could be performed, because under that very narrow circumstance it is considered the removal of a failed organ and not per se a sterilization, since viability is not possible. If a hysterectomy is only done under this circumstance, it does not represent a shift in church teaching.