Desmond Tutu hospitalized with infection

CAPE TOWN , South Africa, July 15 (UPI) -- South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu will be hospitalized for a second day with a persistent infection, his family announced Wednesday.

Tutu, 83, the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize recipient for his work in ending South African apartheid, retired from public life several years ago but remains active through humanitarian organizations. He was admitted Tuesday to a Cape Town hospital.

His daughter, Rev. Canon Mpho Tutu, did not specify the cause of the infection, but offered a statement Wednesday thanking "everyone who had sent love and prayers over the past 24 hours, telephonically, electronically and through social and mass media channels."

Tutu has dealt with prostate cancer, which caused him to cancel travel plans in 2014, as well as an infection which hospitalized him in 2013. Regarded as South Africa's spiritual successor to Nelson Mandela, he was appointed by Mandela to lead the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the end of the apartheid era.