Tom Hanks and his wife donate blood for the development of a vaccine against coronavirus

The world-famous American actor Tom Hanks, who at one time converted to Orthodoxy, as well as his wife Rita Wilson recovered after undergoing COVID-19 - and are now donating blood, which should help scientists develop an effective vaccine against coronavirus.

Hanks, 63, jokes that he and his wife are happy to take part in the development of 'Hanksin' - a medicine based on the blood of people rich in antibodies, who, by the grace of God, have overcome the disease. The Oscar winner tells how they survived the disease while in Australia: his whole body ached, and he also felt constant fatigue. His wife, Rita, suffered from the disease more severely: she had a high fever, as well as a complete loss of taste and smell for three weeks until the virus subsided.

Recall that Tom Hanks was born into a Catholic family and converted to Orthodoxy in adulthood under the influence of his second wife, Rita Wilson, an American woman with Greek and Bulgarian roots. Baptism according to the Orthodox rite was performed over Tom in one of the temples of the Church of Greece. Later, he and his wife got married, and their children were also baptized in Orthodoxy. “When you come to a decision in your life that you need to get married and have children, it is important at this stage to decide on the spiritual heritage of your future family. I got married in the same church where my wife was baptized. My children were baptized in the same font as my wife. This makes our family a part of a large Universal Church, 'Thomas magazine quotes Tom as saying.

The entire Tom Hanks family attends the same Orthodox Church in Los Angeles; in addition, the actor is one of his trustees. Not so long ago, while on vacation, Hanks visited Antarctica on his own yacht, where he visited the Russian Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity: in it he offered prayer and then climbed the belfry.