Bishop Robert DeWitt, 87, who ushered sweeping change into the Episcopal Church by breaking ranks to ordain women priests in 1974, died November 21

Christian Century, Dec 27, 2003

* Bishop Robert DeWitt, 87, who ushered sweeping change into the Episcopal Church by breaking ranks to ordain women priests in 1974, died November 21. The former bishop of Philadelphia, DeWitt joined three other bishops in a landmark ordination service for 11 women in 1974--two years before the Episcopal Church formally agreed to open the priesthood to women.

The denomination later went on to ordain its first woman bishop, Barbara Harris, in 1989 and now has nearly a dozen female bishops. DeWitt retired from Philadelphia in 1976 and became editor of the Witness, a social-justice journal. He retired again in 1981 to an island in Penobscot Bay, Maine, where he helped form a lobstermen's cooperative and tutored at a local school, according to the New York Times.