PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Philadelphia Inquirer
By Jim Remsen
Inquirer Faith Life Editor
As District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham stood before the cameras yesterday denouncing the patterns of sexual abuse and cover-ups in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Marie Whitehead listened quietly nearby, wiping away tears.
When Abraham called for a series of legal reforms, Whitehead clenched her fist and uttered, "Amen."
In the back of the room, Sister Mary Lou Bishoff, a Philadelphia nun and activist, stared at the floor.
"It's horrendous, absolutely horrendous," she said of the grand jury's report that the archdiocese ignored warnings about abusive priests and moved repeat offenders from parish to parish.
Around the region, the grand jury's report left Catholic clergy and laity brooding about the state of their church. As the news reverberated around the five-county archdiocese, some people voiced dismay, others outright revulsion.
The priest-abuse scandal is a raw wound for Whitehead, who says she was abused as a girl for three years by a now-dead priest whom she won't name. Now 58, a nurse, and a Presbyterian, Whitehead is the local president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.