PHILADELPHIA (PA)
PRNewswire
PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Catholics in the Philadelphia region
are deeply dissatisfied with the church leadership's handling of sexual abuse
and cynical about the motives of church leaders, according to the latest
Temple/Inquirer Poll, conducted by Temple University's Institute of Public
Affairs (IPA) in collaboration with The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The survey results come after a grand-jury report and weeks of news
accounts about sexual abuse by priests in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
"The Temple/Inquirer Poll found that large majorities in the Philadelphia
metropolitan area are highly critical of the church's leaders, and in many
respects Catholics are as critical as non-Catholics," said IPA director
Michael Hagen, an associate professor of political science at Temple. "Few
Catholics believe that the church has been treated unfairly, either in a
recent grand-jury report or in the news coverage that followed."
The poll results are based on telephone interviews conducted between Oct.
24 and Nov. 6 with a scientifically selected random sample of 1,500 adult
residents of the nine-county Philadelphia metropolitan area (five southeastern
Pennsylvania counties and four New Jersey counties). The overall margin of
error attributable to sampling is 3 percentage points.