Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Cardinal George's Cancer Resurfaces, Prompting New Chemotherapy Treatment

By DNAinfo Staff on March 7, 2014 10:17am

  After his cancer has been dormant for more than a year, Cardinal Francis George will start a new chemotherapy treatment, according to the Archdiocese of Chicago.
After his cancer has been dormant for more than a year, Cardinal Francis George will start a new chemotherapy treatment, according to the Archdiocese of Chicago.
View Full Caption
Getty Images/Scott Olson

CHICAGO — After his cancer had been dormant for more than a year, Cardinal Francis George will start a new chemotherapy treatment because of new "activity of cancer cells surrounding his right kidney," according to the Archdiocese of Chicago.

The treatment is expected to take two months and George plans to maintain his administrative and public role as the head of Chicago's Catholic community as his health permits, according to a statement.

"As I prepare for this next round of chemo, I ask for your prayers, which have always sustained me, and for your understanding if I cannot always fulfill the schedule already set for the next several months," George said in the latest edition of Catholic New World, the Archdiocese's newspaper.

"While I am not experiencing symptoms of cancer at this time, this is a difficult form of the disease, and it will most probably eventually be the cause of my death."

George was diagnosed with urothelial cancer in August 2012 and underwent chemotherapy then.

He was installed as archbishop in May 1997. George's first cancer diagnosis came in 2006, when the disease was found in his bladder.