Across the Nation

3rd diocese will split from Episcopal Church

QUINCY, ILL. --- A third conservative diocese is splitting from the Episcopal Church in a long-running dispute over the Bible, gay relationships and other issues.

The Diocese of Quincy voted to leave the national denomination during an annual meeting that ended Saturday.

It joins dioceses in Fresno, Calif., and Pittsburgh. A fourth diocese, in Fort Worth, Texas, will decide next weekend whether to follow suit.

The secessions are a response to decades of debate over what Episcopalians should believe. Tensions erupted in 2003 when the denomination consecrated its first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

The head of the Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, said she laments the departure.

Woman, 90, lived with dead family, police say

EVANSTON, ILL. --- A 90-year-old woman apparently has been living in a house with the bodies of her three siblings, one of whom might have been dead since the early 1980s, police in suburban Chicago said.

The bodies were found Friday morning by police who were called by a senior advocate, said Evanston police Cmdr. Tom Guenther.

The woman was taken to a hospital for observation. The Cook County medical examiner's office said Saturday that the people had died of natural causes, but it would not say how long they had been dead.

The office identified the dead as Anita Bernstorff, who was born in 1910; Frank Bernstorff, who was born in 1920; and Elaine Bernstorff, who was born in 1916. Anita was last seen alive in May 2008, Frank in 2003 and Elaine in the early 1980s, authorities said.

Neighbors described the woman as alert and aware, and they said she was well-liked on their close-knit block. She enjoyed gardening and shared her plants with others, they said.

One longtime resident said the woman explained away her siblings' absence by telling neighbors her brother had gone to live with other relatives and that one of her sisters was agoraphobic -- afraid to leave the home.

In other news

THE REV. ANDREW GREELEY, a best-selling novelist, was in critical but stable condition Saturday at a Chicago-area hospital after falling and fracturing his skull. The 80-year-old Catholic priest has written more than 50 novels, many of them international mystery thrillers.