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The situation facing the beautiful Église Sainte-Marie in Church Point is a perfect illustration of the problems that places of worship in Canada are facing these days.

As Tina Comeau of the Tri-County Vanguard wrote this week, the huge building is no longer a church, having held its final mass on Christmas Eve. That’s because the congregation has shrunk to the point where attendees get lost in the church’s vast interior.

The sanctuary is large enough to hold 900; most recent masses served no more than 35.

The main issue is the building itself, though. Like many old churches, Église Sainte-Marie needs a lot of work. The roof (churches have large roofs) needs replacing, many of the stained-glass windows are broken and shingles are missing from the siding. Buckets collect water leaking from the ceiling.

So the community is looking for ideas on how to repurpose the building. For more than a century, it has been a landmark, dominating the surroundings and serving as a meeting place, not just for worship but for social activities.

For that to continue, though, will require about $3 million, which a local society has set out to raise in order to buy the building. And there’s the rub, not only for the famous and former Church Point church, but for thousands of other churches all over Canada. As congregations dwindle and the maintenance bills pile up, what do you do?

City churches sit on valuable land, so a sale is often possible. Canadian Martyrs in Halifax’s south end, for instance, was adjacent to St. Mary’s University, which coveted the property. Parishioners were upset, but the university bought the land and tore the building down.

Small-town churches have found new life as performance spaces or condos. In 2016, the former United church on Kentville’s main street became the new town library.

Many others are determined to continue on: St. Andrew’s Catholic church in Boisdale, we learned in a story in Tuesday’s paper, has started a GoFundMe campaign to raise $12,000 for roof repairs.

Heritage group National Trust for Canada told the CBC last March that they estimate 9,000 places of worship, about one-third of all the churches in the country, will be lost over the next decade. Many are landmarks, the loss of which would forever alter hundreds of communities.

These are not just places of worship. They host Brownie meetings, community events, political gatherings, church suppers and art shows. We’ve all gathered in church basements to munch on sandwiches and reconnect with old acquaintances after funerals or baptisms.

They’re a social institution on the same level as a local school. They help us form communities, meet our neighbours and feel like we’re part of something.

That’s why it seems so painful when they close and why people work so hard to keep them open.

Places of Faith, a collaboration with the National Trust and a group called Faith & the Common Good, helps churches and community groups in this situation. In a tight spot with your church? Look them up.