Iraq's top Shiite cleric took the unusual step Sunday of inviting reporters to his office to deny widespread rumors he was seriously ill.Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is thought to be 80 and suffers from an unspecified heart ailment for which he received treatment in London in 2004. The Iranian-born cleric does not give media interviews and rarely ventures out of his modest home in the old quarter of the holy city of Najaf 100 miles south of Baghdad.
"There have been rumors recently about my health. They hurt believers inside and outside Iraq. They are incorrect," an official in al-Sistani's office quoted the grand ayatollah as saying to the reporters.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said al-Sistani berated journalists who publish hearsay but also commended the media for what he said was its role in presenting society with the "facts."
Last week, rumors that al-Sistani was critically ill swept Shiite communities throughout the Middle East. Such rumors are not uncommon and surface periodically in Najaf, the world's foremost and oldest seat of Shiite learning.
But Sunday's hurriedly arranged meeting with the reporters, which lasted less than 10 minutes, was the first time that the cleric has gone to such lengths to dispel the rumors.
Al-Sistani, who came to Iraq more than 50 years ago but remains an Iranian citizen, has emerged as the country's top Shiite cleric following the ouster in 2003 of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime.