Evangelist Oral Roberts Hospitalized in Orange County : Medicine: After experiencing chest pain, he undergoes successful angioplasty to clear an artery.

Televangelist Oral Roberts was hospitalized in stable condition Wednesday after undergoing an emergency medical procedure to clear an artery.

Roberts, 74, is expected to remain hospitalized at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian for about a week.

Roberts’ son, evangelist Richard Roberts, said in a statement at the hospital that his father began experiencing chest pain after appearing on a national television show Tuesday night at Trinity Broadcast Network in Tustin.

He was hospitalized early Wednesday and tests revealed blockage in an artery, Hoag officials said.

“I caught the first plane this morning to be at my father’s side,” Richard Roberts, 43, said in his statement.

During the medical procedure, an angioplasty, a balloon catheter is inserted into the artery and expanded.

“The procedure was successful, which means that the procedure produced a regular blood flow to the heart,” said Carol Heywood, a spokeswoman at Hoag Hospital. “It is a non-surgical, non-invasive procedure--they go through a vein. We perform about 300 per year. It’s pretty standard.”

Heywood said the standard length of stay after an angioplasty is one week. Roberts also underwent two successful surgeries in 1991 to widen his carotid arteries.

The Oklahoma evangelist, a national figure for more than 40 years, is famous for his televised pleas for money and his emotional, revivalist style of preaching. His fund-raising tactics have triggered widespread controversy and criticism.

In 1987, Roberts said “God will call me home” unless his followers contributed $8 million to fund medical scholarships for students enrolled in Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, a school he founded in 1968.

He had made a similar financial plea in 1980, saying that he saw a 900-foot-tall image of Jesus towering over a large hospital complex he was building next to his university. After both appeals, he received millions of dollars in donations.

In 1989, he said he needed $11 million to stop his ministry, hospital and university from going bankrupt. The goal, however, wasn’t met and the hospital was sold and shut down.