Archbishop Desmond Tutu has passed away at age 90. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning cleric was a leader of the movement to end apartheid in South Africa.
Archbishop Tutu battled various illnesses for years and was admitted to the hospital multiple times. An official cause of death has not been mentioned.
South African President Cyril RAmaphosa called Tutu “a patriot without equal” in a statement to CNN:
“A man of extraordinary intellect, integrity and invincibility against the forces of apartheid, he was also tender and vulnerable in his compassion for those who had suffered oppression, injustice and violence under apartheid, and oppressed and downtrodden people around the world.”
In his life’s work, Tutu was instrumental at the end of apartheid, which was an official policy of racial segregation. Once apartheid ended, Tutu assumed the rule of the chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, aside from the recently freed Nelson Mandela who became president.
“He was larger than life, and for so many in South Africa and around the world his life has been a blessing,” the Nelson Mandela Foundation said in a statement. “His contributions to struggles against injustice, locally and globally, are matched only by the depth of his thinking about the making of liberatory futures for human societies.”
President Barack Obama referred to Archbishop Tutu as a “mentor” in a statement. He awarded Archbishop Tutu with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
“Archbishop Tutu was grounded in the struggle for liberation and justice in his own country, but also concerned with injustice everywhere. He never lost his impish sense of humor and willingness to find humanity in his adversaries,” said Obama.
