REASON UNKNOWN

Heinz Kerry treated in hospital

Wife of top envoy in critical condition

Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, is in critical but stable condition in a hospital in Nantucket, Mass.

BOSTON — Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and heiress to the Heinz ketchup fortune, was hospitalized Sunday in Massachusetts for an undisclosed medical condition.

Emergency personnel were called to the Kerry home in Nantucket at 3:38 p.m. and took Ms. Heinz Kerry, 74, to Nantucket Cottage Hospital.

After doctors stabilized her there, she was flown to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she remained in critical but stable condition Sunday night.

“The family is grateful for the outpouring of support it has received and aware of the interest in her condition,” Mr. Kerry’s spokesman, Glen Johnson, said. “But they ask for privacy at this time.”

Ms. Heinz Kerry is a breast cancer survivor, having undergone lumpectomies in both breasts in 2009, but it’s not known if her condition is related to cancer.

No other information was immediately available.

Ms. Heinz Kerry, widow of U.S. Sen. John Heinz III, who died in a 1991 plane crash, is chairman of the Heinz Endowments and the Heinz Family Philanthropies, among the nation’s largest private foundations with more than $1.4 billion in assets.

In 1995, Ms. Heinz Kerry married Mr. Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts whom she met at an Earth Day rally five years earlier.

She supported his run for president in 2004, but since his loss to George W. Bush she has kept a relatively low profile.

Her husband remained in the Senate until this year, when he was named secretary of state.

The Block News Alliance consists of The Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Torsten Ove is a reporter for the Post-Gazette.

Contact Torsten Ove at: tove@post-gazette.com or 412-231-0132.