Greece Orthodox Church Leader Hospitalized

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The ailing leader of Greece's Orthodox Church was hospitalized for tests Monday as doctors re-evaluated his cancer treatment, his office said.

Archbishop Christodoulos, 68, was diagnosed with cancer in June. He spent 10 weeks hospitalized in Miami but a planned liver transplant was aborted when the cancer was found to have spread. His office did not say how long he was expected to be in the hospital.

Christodoulos, elected church leader in 1998, has been instrumental in attempts to improve ties with the Roman Catholic Church. In 2001, he received Pope John Paul II in Athens — the first pope to visit Greece in nearly 1,300 years — ignoring protests from Orthodox hard-liners.

He followed up last year with a historic visit to the Vatican, where he and Pope Benedict XVI signed a joint declaration calling for inter-religious dialogue and restating opposition to abortion and euthanasia.

Nearly all of Greece's 11 million people have been baptized as Orthodox. There are more than 200 million members of the Orthodox Church worldwide, making it the second-largest Christian group after the Catholic Church.

SOURCE:


READ THE PREVIOUS POST RELATED TO THIS STORY: