(LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Péter Erdő, the primate of Hungary, has suffered a heart attack and been hospitalized in “serious condition.”

The 73-year-old metropolitan archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, who was an early leading contender in last year’s papal conclave, is slowly recovering, according to journalist Diane Montagna.

Sources close to the cardinal say that he is asking for prayers, according to Messainlatino.

“He has a lot of faith,” one source close to the cardinal told Montagna.

Erdő is considered by many to be conservative and orthodox due to his focus on evangelization, his Marian devotion, his defense of the hierarchical nature of the Church, his support for clerical celibacy, and his orthodox statements on some moral questions, such as abortion and the use of contraception.

However, as Matthew McCusker has pointed out, Erdő was the relator general at the 2014 Extraordinary Synod on the Family, which published under Erdő’s name a Relatio Pre Disceptionem that was incompatible with the profession of the Catholic faith. It laid the foundation for the sacrilegious reception of Holy Communion by public adulterers (established in Amoris Laetitia in 2016) and the “blessing” of same-sex unions (established in Fiducia Supplicans in 2023).

His defenders argue that in allowing the text to be published in his name, and by reading it out though it were his own, Erdő was guilty of timidity, but was not manifesting his own heretical convictions. Erdő himself denied authorship of at least some passages the following day.